Capturing the Implications of Services Trade Liberalization

This paper evaluates the impact of service sector trade liberalization on the world economy by a ten-region, eleven-sector CGE model with import embodied technology transfer from developed countries to developing countries. Simulation results show that service sector trade liberalization not only directly affects world service production and trade, but also has significant implications for other sectors in the economy. The major channel of the impact is through inter-industry input-output relations and TFP growth induced from services imported by developing countries from developed countries, which may be embodied with new information and advanced technology.     

The universal pathway to commodity structure upgrading in global trade evolution

Some scholars have proposed that economies grow by upgrading the commodities they produce and export. Product space theory holds that the export structure is determined by a country’s factor endowment and technological level, proposing the revealed comparative advantage (RCA) to analyze the specialization on commodities for countries. With the development of global trade, the network of multilateral trade relations has become increasingly hierarchical and complex. It would, therefore, be valuable to identify general patterns across countries of upgrading the commodity structure in the evolution of their participation in global trade. This paper shows that a typical pattern of change in the dominant types of foreign trade occurs when an economy has grown to a certain scale. With economic development, the advantages of high-technology commodities in trade gradually become more prominent.

     

The Magnitude and Distance Decay of Trade in Goods and Services: New Evidence for European Countries

Abstract

Using a newly assembled, consistent and disaggregated dataset (12 goods and 7 services) on internal and bilateral trade for 25 European countries, we analyse the difference between trade in goods and services. The measurement of both trade in goods and trade in services is improved over earlier research, allowing us to compare trade in goods and services in a coherent and systematic way. First, our dataset is made consistent with the domestic demand and production and the total exports and imports at the sector and product levels. Second, we explicitly control for re-exports. We find that, although goods are more often bilaterally traded than services, the volume of bilateral trade in services does not attenuate less with distance than the volume of bilateral trade in goods.     

De-industrialization and comparative advantage in the global value chain

We investigate the causes of de-industrialization and potential for re-industrialization using trade-linked input–output data from WIOD. By introducing a new global value chain measure of comparative advantage, we relate a sector's share in domestic final demand to that in production and separate the direct effect of trade on its income share. This method identifies the declining share of manufacturing value added in domestic final expenditures to be the main cause of de-industrialization. Differences in comparative advantage between countries do matter, especially in the case of employment shares, but have a limited impact via the direct trade effect on value added. The findings point to a peculiar paradox of industrial policy: precisely when it is successful in raising competitiveness and hence productivity growth of manufacturing, it also furthers the global decline of relative prices in manufacturing. In contrast to the national objectives of re-industrialization, effective industrial policies accelerate de-industrialization in the global economy.     

The Convergence and Divergence of Job Discretion Between Occupations and Institutional Regimes in Europe from 1995 to 2010

Drawing on technical change and institutional theories, this paper examines the convergence and divergence of job discretion between occupations and institutional regimes in Europe from 1995–2010. Latent growth modelling of a pseudo‐panel data set derived from the European Working Conditions Survey reveals that significantly different rates of change have led to an increasing polarization of job discretion between occupations and between Nordic and other European countries. Across occupations the findings are in keeping with routine‐biased technical change rather than skill‐biased technical change theories and suggest that the effects of technical change on job discretion depend largely on whether technology substitutes or complements job tasks. Across countries, the results are in line with employment regime theory, which suggests that institutional differences (particularly employment policies and trade union influence) are driving cross‐national variation in job discretion. Overall, a more comprehensive empirical and theoretical understanding is provided of factors shaping change in a key aspect of job quality, namely job discretion.     

A micro-level insight on trade-induced job polarization and poverty in Russia

The effect of trade liberalization on workers with different skill levels at distinct types of firms is often surmised to be heterogeneous. This paper employs a longitudinal individual-level dataset—the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS)—to study the impact of trade liberalization on the relative poverty of various groups of workers in Russia. More specifically, we use the country’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a quasi-natural experiment to analyze the impact of trade liberalization on workers at different skill levels and types of firms. Our analysis reveals significant trade-induced job polarization, meaning that, in the tradable sector, even though employment and wages are increasing for low-wage and the high-wage occupations, they are shrinking for mid-wage occupations, leading to a higher poverty rate for workers seeking employment in mid-wage occupations in that sector. Our results are robust to a battery of robustness checks, and they point to the crucial role of state-owned enterprises in attenuating the adverse effects of trade shocks on the welfare of workers.     

贸易成本、比较优势与出口结

研究目标：总体贸易成本对一国出口贸易结构的影响。研究方法：测算30个样本国与其所有贸易伙伴国的双边贸易成本和各国的总体贸易成本,并利用行业层面数据构建计量模型,将贸易成本与劳动力和资本等要素禀赋一起,经验地研究总体贸易成本对一国出口结构的影响。研究发现：总体贸易成本可以和资本与劳动力等要素禀赋一样,成为比较优势的来源,影响一国对外出口行业的选择;一国即便不具有资本禀赋的优势,但只要不断降低总体贸易成本,完全可能选择生产并出口高贸易成本密集度和资本密集型行业的商品。研究创新：从比较优势的角度经验研究了总体贸易成本对出口结构的影响。研究价值：为产业结构升级提供了新思路。     

Do the carry trades respond to geopolitical risks? Evidence from BRICS countries

This paper aims to analyze the implications of geopolitical risks on the return and volatility of carry trade transactions in the context of BRICS countries for the period 2006–2020. Fixed effects regressions considering the sample countries as a single portfolio document that geopolitical risks are correlated with volatility, while the results are inconclusive for returns. The non-parametric time-varying coefficients panel data estimations further indicate that the effect of geopolitical risks on carry trade volatility is amplified during the Global Financial Crisis and the post-2016 episode. Moving to the disaggregated data, the time-varying robust Granger causality test of Rossi and Wang (2019) show that geopolitical risks have a significant in-sample predictive power for both carry trade return and volatility during a myriad of sub-periods, which can not be captured by standard constant parameter techniques in the presence of instabilities. Overall, our empirical results suggest that the exposure to geopolitical risks should be taken into account by global investors for risk diversification purposes when entering carry trade positions in BRICS countries.     

绿色壁垒与应对策略

一些国家设置的绿色壁垒已经成为我国扩大出口的重要障碍。绿色壁垒具有两重性，既有推动世界经济实现绿色化的积极意义，又是一些发达国家以合理的籍口对不发达国家进行不合理贸易保护主义的措施。我国做为出口大国，应当正确面对绿色壁垒，切实从积极方面制定对策，以保证在国际经济发展绿色化的进程中，长期稳固的保持我国的出口优势。     

WHITHER PANAMA? CONSTRUCTING A CONSISTENT AND BALANCED WORLD SUT SYSTEM INCLUDING INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND TRANSPORT MARGINS

This paper extends work done within the World Input–Output Database project (WIOD), which compiled supply and use tables (SUTs) for 40 countries, covering about 85% of the world economy, by adding SUTs for the “rest of the world” (RoW), the approximately 15% of the world economy not covered by the 40 countries included in the WIOD database, ensuring a consistent and balanced world SUT system. The term “consistency” means that at the world level, all flows of goods and services balance, properly accounting for trade and transport services used in international trade (the “cif-fob difference”). This results in SUTs for the RoW which, together with bilateral trade matrices for all commodities (and together with the 40 national SUTs from the WIOD project), describe a consistent SUT system at the world level.     

Are shirking and leisure substitutable? An empirical test of efficiency wages based on urban economic theory

Recent theoretical work has examined the spatial distribution of unemployment using the efficiency wage model as the mechanism by which unemployment arises in the urban economy. This paper extends the standard efficiency wage model in order to allow for behavioral substitution between leisure time at home and effort at work. In equilibrium, residing at a location with a long commute affects the time available for leisure at home and therefore affects the trade off between effort at work and risk of unemployment. This model implies an empirical relationship between expected commutes and labor market outcomes, which is tested using the Public Use Microdata sample of the 2000 U.S. Decennial Census. The empirical results suggest that efficiency wages operate primarily for blue collar workers, i.e. workers who tend to be in occupations that face higher levels of supervision. For this subset of workers, longer commutes imply higher levels of unemployment and higher wages, which are both consistent with shirking and leisure being substitutable.     

Does Skill Content Explain Total Trade and Intra‐Industry Trade?*

This study compares the results of skill content tests for types of trade flows under alternative assumptions about the technologies used to produce imports and exports. For trade between high‐ and middle‐income countries, we show that the match between the actual skill content of trade and that predicted by endowments in a Heckscher–Ohlin–Vanek framework improves substantially if technological heterogeneity across countries is allowed for and if the factor content of intra‐industry trade is included with that of inter‐industry trade. Endowment differences are important in explaining net trade and vertical intra‐industry trade, but not horizontal intra‐industry trade.     

The impact of ICT on the demand for skilled labour: A cross-country comparison

This paper provides a unique cross-country comparative perspective on the impact of information and communication technology on the demand for skilled labour. It employs panel data for the US, the UK and France, comprising several skill categories for each country for the 1980s and 1990s. The paper considers the issue of whether skill bias is transitory or permanent both by considering changes through time and by dividing the highly skilled into IT specific and other occupations. The results indicate that the impact of technology on the demand for skilled labour is slowing down, at least in the US, supporting a transitory interpretation.     

基于引力模型的服务贸易决定因素分析

近年来,服务贸易在世界经济中的重要性日益增加。研究影响中国服务贸易发展的决定因素,并探寻合理化的路径以促进服务贸易发展,具有较强的现实意义。研究发现,引力模型适用于中国对外服务贸易决定因素的解释,双边服务贸易额与两国的GDP成正比,与距离成反比。而且,两国的经济规模差异越小,双边贸易量就越大。另外,贸易伙伴国服务业产值占比的上升,有利于增进中国对其服务进口。但是,中国服务业产值占比的增加,并未提升中国服务贸易的出口能力。因此,必须高度重视服务业的发展,促进工业与服务业关系的互动协调,在关键领域形成具有自主知识产权的核心专利和技术标准,大力发展知识、资本、技术密集型服务业。     

A world trade model based on comparative advantage with m regions,n goods,and k factors

This paper describes the World Trade Model, a linear program that determines world prices, scarcity rents, and international trade flows based on comparative advantage in a world economy with m regions, n goods, and k factors. The new model generalizes the World Model of Leontief et al. (1977) in ways that make it particularly useful for analyzing scenarios about sustainable development. Major properties of the model are demonstrated, and sources of the gains from trade are identified for the world as a whole and for individual regions. Illustrative results are reported for a 10-region, 8-good, 3-factor model of the world economy.     

Estimation of trade and domestic distortions: an application to world agriculture

The world’s nations often produce commodities for which they have no apparent comparative advantage, and do so with techniques that are not particularly efficient by world standards. These inefficiencies may arise from various forms of trade and domestic distortions, as described in Chau et al., Int Econ Rev 44:1079–1095, (2003). We estimate these distortions for 33 countries of the world using a newly compiled data set. We find that domestic distortions tend to be slightly more important than trade distortions. For the average country, revenues in the agricultural sector would be 26% higher if domestic distortions were eliminated, but 21% higher if trade distortions were eliminated. Our measures of trade and domestic distortions across countries provide a complement to measures of protectionism such as producer subsidy equivalents.     

Fragmentation and vertical intra-industry trade in East Asia

East Asia experienced an unprecedented change in its international trade patterns in the last 10–15 years. To investigate this development, the paper decomposes machinery trade into one-way trade, vertical intra-industry trade (vertical IIT), and horizontal intra-industry trade (horizontal IIT), using finely disaggregated international trade data. Our empirical analysis confirms that the significance of vertical IIT drastically increased, while the relative importance of one-way trade dropped. In addition, our empirical results show no evidence that most vertical IIT conforms to the vertical product differentiation model. Rather, the explosive increase in vertical IIT is largely due to the expansion of back-and-forth transactions in vertically fragmented cross-border production processes. The findings show that vertical international production sharing did become an essential part of each economy in East Asia in the 1990s, particularly with the explosive increase in vertical transactions of machinery parts and components.     

中国与其他金砖国家贸易隐含碳研究

本文采用WIOD提供的金砖国家投入产出和直接碳排放数据,通过建立MRIO模型计算1995~2011年中国与其他金砖国家贸易隐含碳排放量,并进一步考察了中国在不同双边贸易中所处地位特征和是否存在碳减排的国际贸易途径。结果表明,中国与不同金砖国家贸易所处地位存在异质性特征,主要表现为中国在中俄贸易中以贸易逆差换取碳减排、中印贸易中以碳排放换取贸易顺差、中巴贸易中隐含碳净出口和贸易逆差共存。中国可通过鼓励相对低碳行业出口,并同时鼓励相对高碳行业进口和金砖国家内部互补性贸易的国际贸易途径促进实现中国碳减排目标。中国应该充分发挥金砖国家合作机制,实现中国与其他金砖国家的"共享式"碳减排。     

中美要素禀赋与贸易不平衡实证分析

本文采用巴拉萨的显示性比较优势指数计算,测定中关两国贸易竞争力的相关情况;通过建立模型研究中国劳动力优势与中美制造业贸易差额的相关性。通过上述量化分析,本文认为,中国相对美国的单位劳动成本的优势与中关制造业贸易差额有一定的关联性,中国相对美国的劳动成本优势每增加1个百分点,中关制造业贸易差额就会随着增加0．89个百分点。     

A world trade model with bilateral trade based on comparative advantage

This paper describes an extension of Duchin's world trade model to include the explicit representation of transportation costs, permitting the endogenous determination of bilateral trade flows and region-specific prices. The original model is a linear program that, based on comparative advantage and the minimization of factor use, determines regional production and trade flows as well as world prices and scarcity rents for m regions, n good, and k factors. The new world trade model with bilateral trade achieves its objectives by introducing transportation services and geographically dependent transportation requirements for each traded good and each pair of potential trade partners. The formulation of this model and its major properties are presented, and results from a preliminary analysis with 11 regions, eight goods, four transportation sectors, and six factors of production are reported and compared with corresponding results from the world trade model. On the basis of this comparison, we conclude that transportation costs have little impact on a region's total imports or exports of a given commodity.