Программа по формированию навыков безопасного поведения на дорогах и улицах «Добрая дорога детства» 2
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Lynx economiesThe advanced ex-communist countries have done well—and will do even betterTHE best-performing ex-communist economies are setting quite a pace: Estonia and Latvia posted 10% GDP growth in 2005, reminiscent of Asia's “tigers”. The question now is whether the new Europeans can keep it up and catch the richer half of their continent. Few worry about external shocks, though Hungary, with its big current-account and budget deficits, looks vulnerable. For most, basic competitiveness is more pertinent. A study by the Vienna Institute for Comparative Economic Studies, a think-tank, and Bank Austria Creditanstalt paints an encouraging picture, at least for the eight ex-communist countries that joined the European Union two years ago. They are usually termed the EU-8, but “lynx economies”—in honour of the region's own fierce felines—would be catchier. Their prospects are much brighter than those of the next candidates for membership, such as Romania and Bulgaria. In particular, the lynxes look set to keep their edge against their Asian competitors in the EU market. The study measures the EU-8's competitiveness in terms of export performance (both size and quality), economic structures (a big share for services is a strength, farming and manufacturing are not) and the friendliness of the business environment (from bureaucracy to infrastructure). On some scores, the lynxes have almost caught up. They gain 65% of their gross value-added from services, only just below rich EU countries, at 69%. The second-rank tigers (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand) make only 47% through services. They have 13% of value added coming from agriculture; among the lynxes, it is 4.3%, in old Europe, 2.7%. The growth in the lynxes' exports to rich countries (see chart) beats that of any Asian economy bar China. Those exports are fuelled by sharply rising foreign direct investment. As a share of EU-8 GDP, it was worth 29% in 2000 and 38.1% in 2004. In the second-rank Asian countries, this ratio fell, from 26% to 19%.  Even better, the quality of exports is shifting upwards. The study notes particularly fast growth in what it calls “medium high-tech” industries, which now make up the biggest category of exports. Here the lynxes are raising not only the prices they charge but also market share. Two big weaknesses remain. One is in the quality of public institutions. The World Bank and others compile detailed scores of business-friendliness on which all European countries, rich and poor, are outshone by the likes of Singapore and Hong Kong. The EU-8 need to make sure that they emulate not stagnant old Europe but its dynamic rivals in Asia. This is improving, slowly. A bigger problem is in research and development. Most post-communist countries devote puny amounts of money to this: the lynxes average only 0.8% of GDP, compared with 2% in western Europe. Politicians grumble that the foreigners who own most of their industries prefer to shop at home for brainpower that rich countries can afford to subsidise more generously. That's partially true, but politicians are slow to recognise another problem: post-communist universities are still largely unreformed, complacent and introverted. There are plenty of ways that ambitious countries could pep them up—for example by paying internationally competitive salaries, teaching in English and encouraging closer links with business. Text 2 Leading us astray?The link between business confidence and GDP growth seems to have crackedJUST as some people predict the weather according to the odd behaviour of birds or the leaves of tulips, so Germany's Ifo business-climate index, published each month by a Munich research institute, has long been the most closely watched leading indicator of the country's GDP growth. For the past couple of decades the two series have marched closely in step with one another—until this year, when a large gap seems to be opening up. In March the index rose to its highest level since 1991 (see chart). Its average for the first three months of this year would, on past experience, signal year-on-year GDP growth of 5%, up from only 1% in the fourth quarter. Other official numbers, such as employment and retail sales, suggest that such heady growth is most unlikely. The consensus forecast for German GDP growth this year is less than 2%. Is the IFO index losing its predictive power?  This question is also relevant in other European countries, where similar surveys have also tended to overstate GDP growth of late. Why are businessmen cheerier than their domestic economies warrant? One reason is that business surveys like IFO's often give too much weight to manufacturing and too little to services, which have been growing much more sluggishly in Germany. Another explanation, suggested by economists at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DKW), is that the relationship between business confidence and GDP growth has been distorted by the drop in Germany's trend rate of growth. Based on the best fit between the two series in the 1990s, the IFO index consistently understated growth in the 1970s and 1980s, when trend growth was much higher; today, with a lower trend, it overstates growth. But even after adjusting for the dwindling average, DKW reckons that the latest IFO numbers still imply that German GDP will grow by an impressive 3.5%. Perhaps the most compelling explanation of the widening gap between business surveys and official figures is offshoring. Exuberant business confidence may reflect companies' production and employment plans not at home, but in foreign plants in eastern Europe or China, where firms have shifted production to take advantage of lower labour costs. The IFO index may thus tell us more about output and jobs in Budapest than in Berlin. However, not all firms are moving out of Germany. A recent analysis by Credit Suisse shows that even if average unit labour costs in manufacturing are lower in eastern Europe, Germany still retains a comparative cost advantage in certain industries, including machinery and equipment, and metals. These industries have seen a much smaller flow of direct investment abroad than, say, cars and chemicals. So how optimistic are businesses in these sectors? Interestingly, much of the rebound in the IFO survey has been in industries that have mainly stayed put in Germany, thanks to their comparative advantage. For example, confidence among machinery and equipment makers has risen to an all-time high, while confidence in vehicle manufacture remains relatively weak. And the biggest improvement in any industry in the past year has been in retailing, which is firmly based at home. This suggests that while the IFO index may somewhat exaggerate Germany's prospects, GDP growth this year could well spring a pleasant surprise. Text 3 Sawbones, cowboys and cheatsIs your doctor, mechanic or taxi-driver cheating you? Economics can helpFIRST do no harm, doctors are wont to say. But some find it hard to sit on their hands. In a number of studies in the 1990s, Gianfranco Domenighetti, an economist at the Cantonal Health Office in Ticino, Switzerland, set out to discover whether surgeons performed more operations than were strictly necessary*. He and his colleagues found that the more sophisticated the patient, the less scalpel-happy the doctors. The best informed patients of all are, of course, other doctors. Sure enough, physicians went under the knife much less often than the average Ticino resident. (Lawyers' wives—whom doctors have good reason to fear—had the fewest hysterectomies of all.) Surgeons belong to a class of experts—including computer engineers, car mechanics, taxi-drivers and others—who enjoy a fortunate position in relation to their customers. Not only do they provide a valued service (a cab ride, a repair, an operation), they also tell the customer what service she needs (a long trip, an engine overhaul, a hysterectomy). Their services are known as “credence goods”, because customers take it on faith that the supplier has given them what they need, and no more. But as the Swiss studies show, it pays not to be too credulous. Customers can be overcharged—billed for something they did not get—or “overtreated”—given something they did not need. A mechanic might replace a car's gasket, but bill the customer for a new engine. Or he might replace the car's engine, when only a new gasket was needed. How large do such dangers loom? For those people not married to lawyers, a new paper by Uwe Dulleck of Johannes Kepler University, Linz, and Rudolf Kerschbamer of the University of Innsbruck offers some consolation†. Customers may not know what the expert knows, but they know the incentives the experts face. If everyone acts on this knowledge, the market should, in theory, eliminate some of the incentives for expert dishonesty. Suppose a customer can tell if his car has been fixed or not—it works, or it doesn't—but he cannot tell how it was fixed. In such cases, the mechanic has every reason to charge his customer for new brakes, even if he only replaced the brake pads. The customer should anticipate this danger. Indeed, he should resign himself to it: whatever the size of his car's problem, he can be sure his repair bill will be large. Messrs Dulleck and Kerschbamer pursue this logic another step. If all customers share the same fatalism—as they should—what would the market for experts look like? When punters shop around for a mechanic or a plumber, they will ignore advertised prices for simple jobs. However attractive those rates may be, customers know they will never be lucky enough to pay them. They will instead prefer those experts who charge the least for elaborate procedures: new brakes, not new brake pads. As a result, experts attract customers by shaving their prices for big jobs, and they do not lose any customers by raising their charges for small jobs. Consequently, the prices for all jobs, big and small, will tend to converge. In the extreme, Messrs Dulleck and Kerschbamer show, experts will charge a flat fee for all their services. In a competitive market, they will undercharge for expensive remedies, and overcharge for simple ones. Is that extreme ever reached in real-life markets? Some estate agents now charge fixed fees for selling properties, shamed perhaps by the fact (demonstrated by Steven Levitt and Chad Syverson of the University of Chicago) that agents on commission sell their clients' homes more quickly and cheaply than their own. At the start of their paper, Messrs Dulleck and Kerschbamer repeat some sage advice: if a car mechanic tells you he has replaced a part, ask him to put it in your boot. In many cases, customers can check that the expert really did what he said he did. Even Swiss doctors cannot pretend to remove someone's tonsils without really doing so. In such instances, customers cannot be overcharged. But they can still be overtreated. They know what procedure they received, but not what they needed. Patient, heal thyselfEven if self-diagnosis is beyond them, however, customers can still diagnose the incentives experts face from the prices they post. If a surgeon enjoys fatter margins on bigger operations, he can be counted on to favour them. In principle, therefore, customers should flock to doctors who charge a uniform mark-up on all their procedures. In such surgeries, the price for complicated operations will be higher, but the margin will be the same. That way, the surgeon has no incentive to overtreat his customers. Do such surgeries exist in practice? That would be too much to hope. But many car garages now advertise standard job-completion times and then charge a uniform hourly rate. In other settings, the margins for quicker services are actually higher. New York taxis, for example, charge $2.50 the moment you sit in them, and another $2 for every mile covered. Unfortunately, this pricing solution works only if taxi-drivers and mechanics are fully employed. When they have no trouble finding fares, taxi-drivers have no reason to take you the long way round. If they were not serving you they could be making as much money, or more, serving the next person. In quiet periods, however, the opportunity cost of “overtreating” clueless passengers falls, and the rewards rise. If the driver doubts he can find another fare, he would rather have you in his cab paying $2 a mile, than no one at all. In closing, Messrs Dulleck and Kerschbamer therefore offer advice that would otherwise seem counter-intuitive. If you are worried about being cheated by a taxi-driver or a mechanic, pick the busiest one you can find. © Захарова А.В., 2010 |
