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This study analyses how domestic regulation affects trade in services through commercial presence and to what extent regulation, level and heterogeneity, has an impact on the choice of mode of servicing a foreign market for total services, financial services, transport, communication, computer, and other business services. Regulatory heterogeneity is found to have a relatively large impact on trade through commercial presence. If all countries in the sample harmonized or recognized each other’s regulation, total services trade through commercial presence could increase by between 13 and 30% depending on the country. The study also assesses what determines services suppliers’ choice of mode. Modes of supply are found to be complementary to various degrees. Commercial presence is more dominant the more similar a country pair is as far as regulation and business environment are concerned and countries sharing a common language are more likely to trade through commercial presence. For some sectors it is found that the disadvantage of remoteness is amplified by strict regulation. In most services sectors trade liberalisation generates meaningful market access only if commercial presence is allowed. Furthermore, absence of explicit barriers to trade and investment is not necessarily sufficient to attract foreign investors.

This paper analyses a higher education policy issued in China in 2002: the Quality Assessment of Undergraduate Education Policy. The policy was designed with four main objectives: improvement, compliance, information and accountability. However, it has not completely fulfilled its objectives, especially regarding improvement and accountability, and it has had some unexpected consequences. Reflections on the quality assessment policy show that both inevitable and contingent factors have led to low efficiency. The authors identify the main reasons for this and propose ways to improve the policy based on the principles of the incremental and rational models of policy making and reform.

French
This paper constructs a broad measure of financial conditions for the United States which suggests that since the onset of the credit crisis there has been a marked tightening in financial conditions, despite a substantial easing of policy rates and a depreciation of the dollar. This measure of overall financial conditions includes interest rate spreads for riskier borrowers and a survey measure of the tightness of bank lending standards, which have been the main drivers behind the tightening in financial conditions. Indeed, recent data suggest that the trend deterioration in overall financial conditions has continued into the second half of 2008. The effect of the tightening in overall financial conditions already experienced may subtract 1¾ per cent from GDP over the next four to six quarters. Not only have financial conditions continued to worsen, but much of the impact on the real economy has yet to be felt.

Most European countries have introduced systematic quality assurance as part of an overall governance reform aimed at enhancing universities’ autonomy. Researchers and economic entrepreneurs tend, however, to underestimate the political dimension of accreditation and evaluation when they consider the contribution of quality assurance to the economic competitiveness of universities and/or the economic system as a whole. I intend to shed light on this aspect of quality assurance by 1) analysing how the provision of quality assurance is constrained by the institutional setting in place, and 2) studying the implications of that constraint on the constitution of a national and international market of quality assurance agencies.

I begin the analysis by commenting on the political stake in the emergence of a German market of competing quality assurance agencies, then highlight the irreducible dimension of national politics in creating a European market of quality assurance agencies.

French
The new campus of Queen Margaret University College in the United Kingdom is designed to be a sustainable educational and community resource. Early consultation with students and staff on the campus design revealed a strong desire for a sustainable environment, with plenty of green space for all to enjoy. In response to this, the design focuses on maximising biodiversity, encouraging green transport, and making the most of natural daylight and ventilation in interior spaces. The Queen Margaret RE:LOCATE project will transform 35 acres of low grade farmland into diverse wildlife habitats to provide the parkland setting. The campus will be open to the public for leisure, education and recreation.
French

This paper presents a new methodology for the quantification of qualitative survey data. Traditional conversion methods, such as the probability approach of Carlson and Parkin (1975) or the time-varying parameters model of Seitz (1988), require very restrictive assumptions concerning the expectations formation process of survey respondents. Above all, the unbiasedness of expectations, which is a necessary condition for rationality, is imposed. Our approach avoids this assumptions. The novelty lies in the way the boundaries inside of which survey respondents expect the variable under consideration to remain unchanged are determined. Instead of deriving these boundaries from the statistical properties of the reference time-series (which necessitates the unbiasedness assumption), we directly queried them from survey respondents by a special question in the Ifo World Economic Survey. The new methodology is then applied to expectations about the future development of inflation obtained from the Ifo World Economic Survey.

Significant progress has been made in quantifying the effects of non-tariff measures since OECD commissioned its last major review of this topic in 1997. This paper reviews the literature of NTMs and assesses the different methods available. Additionally, the paper develops a series of questions to help determine which method of analysis is best given the interests of the researchers or policy makers. Of the possible avenues of future research, the trade costs approach is offered. This approach has the potential of shedding new light on the interactions among various policies and practices by assessing which areas offer the greatest potential for gains, and improving the precision of available estimates.

In this paper, we develop a likelihood approach for quantification of qualitative survey data on expectations and perceptions and we propose a new test for expectation consistency (unbiasedness). Our quantification scheme differs from existing methods primarily by using prior information (perhaps derived from economic theory or well established empirical relations) on the underlying process driving the variable of interest. To investigate the properties of our novel quantification scheme and to analyze the size and power properties of the new expectation consistency test, we perform Monte Carlo simulation studies. Overall, the simulation results are very encouraging and show that efficiency gains from including prior information can be substantial relative to existing quantification schemes. Finally, we provide an empirical illustration...

This article takes a brief look at the new rules covering energy performance contracts for Quebec school boards. It discusses the following questions: the school boards’ educational buildings; the school boards’ energy performance; regulations with regard to the awarding of contracts in the public and quasi-public sectors; the new rules for awarding energy performance contracts in education.
French

This paper presents a progress report on the Economics and Statistics Department's applied general equilibrium model -- the WALRAS model. This model has been developed with the explicit objective of quantifying the economy-wide effects of agricultural policies in OECD countries. The common specification of the model for the major OECD agricultural trading countries/regions (Australia, Canada, EEC, Japan, New Zealand and the United States) is described in detail. Results are presented for some preliminary simulations of the effects of removing the 1979-81 levels of agricultural assistance in these countries/regions. The initial results relate only to unilateral liberalisation experiments with the unlinked country/region models, with no account being taken of feedback effects through changes in world agricultural prices and trade volumes ...

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