Camilla Jensen

The establishment of the danish windmill industry—Was it worthwhile?

The paper examines the welfare effects of the Danish subsidies granted for the electricity production from wind power. This policy has induced a remarkable development of the Danish windmill industry resulting in a dominant position on the world market. The article demonstrates a strong learning-by-doing productivity growth in the Danish windmill industry and it analyzes the costs and benefits of this infant industry case. The costs consist of the efficiency loss from diverting electricity production from using fossil fuels to utilizing wind power. Benefits are the reductions in the environmental damage of using fossil fuels, however, the main benefits are related to the emergence of a new export sector. As the value of the windmill firms at the stock exchange by far exceeds that of the accumulated distorted losses in electricity production, this case demonstrates a successful infant industry strategy. JEL no. D2, L5, L6

Foreign Direct Investment and economic transition: Panacea or pain killer?

Abstract This article sets out to make an assessment of the relationship between Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and economic growth in transition countries through a review of the empirical record to date. The first part reviews the phases of transition in combination with policy efforts to attract FDI. In the second part, different growth studies across levels of analysis are juxtaposed to better understand the overall growth impact of FDI in transition countries. Since foreign firms have a large direct effect on performance at the level of the firm it is often assumed that they automatically contribute to the economic growth of host countries. The missing link in this discussion is the concept of ‘trickle down’. Superior direct effects in terms of productivity and profitability are hypothesised to trickle down to the host country both as spillovers, or catalysing effects on local firms, and through the expected increase in income that such direct and indirect effects in combination will generate through labour income and taxes. The review shows that such trickle down effects are quite fragile in terms of being demonstrated to exist in transition countries. Combined with widespread usage of tax holidays, subsidies and acquisition discounts, it is not certain that positive direct effects equate with economic growth in these countries.

Foreign direct investment, industrial restructuring and the upgrading of Polish exports

This paper poses a central question in relation to the economic-structural effect of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) with Polish manufacturing as an empirical case: how FDI coincides with the technology intensity of Polish exports. A short review of the available literature discusses critically the possibility of establishing one-sided cause-effect relationships between trade and FDI. Subsequently the empirical analysis investigates what role incoming FDI appears to have played in relation to Polish export specialization over the period 1989–1996. Results indicate that FDI has affected positively the technology intensity of the Polish export base.

Localized Spillovers in the Polish Food Industry: The Role of FDI in the Development Process?

Jensen C. (2004) Localized spillovers in the Polish food industry: the role of FDI in the development process?, Reg. Studies 38, 535–550. The paper aims to investigate whether there are spillovers and agglomeration effects in the Polish food industry. This part of the research focuses on horizontal or inter-industry types of spillovers assuming that they may be multidirectional and could be based on any kind of community related to geography, industry affiliation and ownership. In the transition countries that have opened up to foreign direct investment very recently, ownership can be an important determinant of the firm’s embeddedness in both local and global networks. The study confirms the relevance of all three types of ‘community’ factors bur raises concerns that foreign investors appear to share their own ‘glocal’ networks, while spillovers among domestic firms are confined to their own and also to highly localized producer communities. An F-test on the appropriateness of pooling confirms the idea that regional policy may have increased the likelihood of segregation.

Scale in technology and learning-by-doing in the windmill industry

This paper examines the remarkable development of technology and the fast learning-by-doing in the windmill industry since it emerged in the beginning of the 1980s. Based on time series of prices of windmills a dynamic cost function for producing windmills is tested. The estimations verified that learning-by-doing in the Danish windmill industry has contributed significantly to improve the cost efficiency of the producers. The technological development has been stimulated both by process and product innovations as the capacity of the individual mills has increased. The learning effect created by early subsidies from the government has consolidated the competitive advantages of the windmill cluster in Denmark and preserved the first mover advantages at the world market. The article concludes that the industry probably will enter into a matured phase in the future with more modest technological growth.

Socialism, Spillovers and Markets in Cuba

This article undertakes an empirical evaluation of Cubas new development strategy placing tourism at the heart of the process of incorporating markets into a socialist system. The principal research question is whether the introduction of markets related to the Cuban tourism complex has been as successful in establishing viable backward linkages to industry as claimed. Drawing on a multitude of quantitative and qualitative sources, the article demonstrates that backward linkage building has been quite successful and even made possible a transformation of Cubas formerly so dependent trade structures. However, there are signs that backward linkages are not as viable as could be desired. Other complementary reforms beside the introduction of markets are necessary, such as fighting soft budget constraints in user and producer firms. The article concludes that it will be difficult to fight the roots of the inherited incentive problem without initiating fundamental labour market reforms.

Trade Policy Review – Malaysia 2010

The paper reviews the recently completed Trade Policy Review for Malaysia. We find that in the case of Malaysia trade has been liberalised and subjected to structural changes to a very high extent over the last three decades. However, reform has been less effective when it comes to trade‐related policies such as investment policies and other national policies that de facto rather than de jure affect competition due to differential treatment of different firms, brands and individuals. This is also mirrored in the faltering levels of investment in Malaysia. An area where Malaysia has been successful is the reorientation towards services. A good example is the tourism industry which is mature and a major export industry in Malaysia today. Nascent service industries such as health, finance, ICT related services and education hold promise to become important export earners in the future. The paper shows that for this new phase of structural change to be truly successful Malaysia must prioritise trade negotiations and integration with her own region and especially ASEAN.

Formal Integration: FDI and trade in Europe

Abstract The paper seeks to explain why formal integration, i.e. membership of the European Union (EU), should matter to Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) by testing a number of hypotheses about the relationship, respective levels and intensity of relationship of the two fundamental forces of real integration: trade and foreign direct investment (FDI). It is expected that formal integration will matter to the level of flows due to a concentric bias (trade creation) arising from introducing deeper integration among countries. But the effect on FDI may be more ambiguous since a lowering of transaction cost should make firms substitute from FDI towards more trade. The analysis shows that FDI and trade are complements at the bilateral aggregate country level within Europe. The analysis also verifies that formal integration has given rise to a concentric bias, but only in the aspect of trade. While the present EU member and the new Accession countries participate equally in FDI flows. The analysis of intensity of relationship between trade and FDI, gives very strong and positive results. Contrary to earlier analysis it is found that causation is two-way and much greater for the chain of causation running from trade to FDI especially in intra-Union flows. But it is also verified that FDI is a particularly important catalyst of trade between the EU and CEE countries.

Trade in tourism services: Explaining tourism trade and the impact of the general agreement on trade in services on the gains from trade

The article addresses two questions related with tourism as a service trade. Can tourism be explained as other export activities? Does service liberalisation have a positive or negative impact on tourism receipts in destination countries? Previous research has either focused on the demand side factors (i.e. factors of demand in the origin countries) or on tourism as a long-run factor of economic growth. The research shows that a complementary perspective such as that offered by trade in a supply side perspective can render additional insights towards understanding tourism. This approach can explain why countries have absolute and comparative advantage. Another finding is that tourism as an export can be explained by some of the same destination factors that explain other service exports. Using different panel estimators the importance of supply side factors that are to some extent exclusive to tourism are demonstrated: the general price competitiveness of the destination, tourism infrastructure and the provision of safety. The econometric models also confirm the relevance of other conventional explanatory factors of trade in services such as GDP per capita and internet usage. The last part of the article analyses the welfare gains from trade under the general agreement on trade in services (GATS). The revenue (tourism receipt) effect is decomposed into a volume (arrival) and price effect. Results suggest that liberalisers under the GATS gained especially from a volume effect with average higher growth rates in the number of arrivals. There is also found to be a positive effect on the average income earned per tourist from being a liberaliser.

Institutional Contexts and FDI Trends in European Emerging Economies

Since 1989, the European emerging economies (EEE) have not only experienced massive changes from within their societies, but also remarkable changes in their interactions with the world economy. By 2003, they have, as a group, converged with worldwide average levels of foreign direct investment (FDI) (UNCTAD, 2004b).