American Journal of Trade and Policy

7-15

Authors: Abdul Ghafoor Awan, Rana Ejaz Ali Khan

Introduction:The economy of the United States is the number one economy of the world on the basis of its GDP size.Many economies of the world depend upon the working upon it. However, US economy has been facing the phenomena of labour productivity slowdown since 1973. The productivity grow was witnessed during 1990s decade due to revolution of information technology but it was proved transitory. To investigate this phenomena the economists have been actively working and using different theoretical and empirical approaches. But it is still an enigma and its real cause has so far not been detected. Objective of the study: The objective of this research study is to investigate why US economy has been facing productivity growth slowdown since long, what are its causes and what is its possible solution? Methodology:The author has used qualitative research approach in which real economy sector and technology economy sector have been studied on the basis of secondary data collected from OECD, IMF, World Bank,etc. The individual share of these sectors in the US GDP has been determined to analyze their effects on productivity growth. The author has also compared goods and services sectors and their contribution into the US GDP. Findings:The results of study shows that no breakthrough or major innovation has been occurred in major sector of US economy. Information technology is a small sector and growth in this sector during 1990s has not brought any significant impact on US economy. The evidence shows that quality of patents is falling despite increasing number of researchers during the period of 1990-2010 and it reflects diminishing return on R&D investment in technology sector. The ratio of input/output is 40/100 which is totally against the concept of constant return to scale.

23-31

Authors: Love M. Chile, Dayal Talukder

This paper examines some of the contradictions and theoretical ambiguities of agricultural trade liberalizationon the welfare of smallholder farmers. Using production, consumption and price data for pre-and post-liberalization periods for two main agricultural crops from Bangladesh (rice) and Tanzania (maize) we critically analyse the correlation between domestic and international prices of rice in Bangladesh and maize in Tanzania to estimate impact of agricultural trade liberalization on price stability/volatility and food security to measure economic benefits of trade liberalization on smallholder farmers. Using coefficient of variation of the level of prices (CV) and corrected coefficient of variation (CCV) as measured by Huchet-Bourdon (2011) we found that the values of both CV and CCV for consumer price in the post-liberalisation were quite large suggesting greater volatility of consumer price of rice in Bangladesh and maize in Tanzania in the post‑liberalization period. We conclude that price volatility diminishes the potential benefits of agricultural trade liberalization forsmallholder farmers who are net-deficit producers, net-deficit sellers and recommend supplementary policy interventions to achieve enhanced welfare from trade liberalization.

42-50

Authors: Md. Abu Bokar Siddique, Taposh Kumar Neogy, Md. Rabiul Islam

The study is an attempt to examine empirically the perceptions of a sample of users of reported information regarding the use of annual reports for decision making, adequacy, reliability, consistency, comparability, relevance, satisfaction and compliance of BASs (IASs) in preparing annual report. Results of the study demonstrated that there is a lack of disclosure in the annual reports of insurance companies. The study also found insignificant variations in opinions towards adequacy, consistency, relevance, satisfaction and compliance of provisions of Bangladesh Accounting Standards in disclosure policy of the companies while there are significant variations in responses regarding reliability and comparability of accounting information disclosed in the annual reports. Insurance companies should develop their reporting policy to satisfy their users through compliance the disclosure requirements of international standards.