TRADE ADJUSTMENT ASSISTANCE AND IMPORT COMPETITION: Experience in the U.S. Footwear Industry: 1980-1997

This article analyzes the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program within NAFTA, the U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agreement (FTA), U.S.-Canada-FTA, and the Orderly Market Agreement (OMA) for the footwear industry. It evaluates costs and benefits as well as factors affecting TAA's certification and denial processes following trade liberalization. A three-stage least-squares (3TLS) model correlates the a priori specifications we developed from the literature and evaluates TAA's enhancement of net consumer surplus. The benefits have significant, independent effects on four census regions of the United States engaged in footwear production. A simulation of the results indicates some robustness in the estimates and supports the Department of Labor (DOL) rule-of-thumb statements of job gains due to trade liberalization. The results are supportive of the bipartisan NAFTA agreement. Due to TAA's benefits to displaced workers, positive net benefits have been substantial from the inception of NAFTA, in 1994, to 1997.     

Welfare effects on the United States of a significant multilateral tariff reduction

This paper summarizes an estimate of the impact of a 50 percent multilateral tariff reduction on U.S. trade, employment, capital utilization, and economic welfare. In addition to calculating conventional measures of consumer surplus and revenue effects, the paper quantifies the economic adjustment costs faced by labor and capital-owners who are displaced by trade liberalization. Account is taken of both direct and indirect effects through utilization of the 367- sector U.S. input-output table. Some of the more interesting and important welfare dislocation estimates are highlighted on an industry-by-industry basis. In the aggregate, the calculated gains from trade liberalization dwarf the measured adjustment costs by a ratio of almost 20 to 1.     

Wie teuer wäre ein Handelskrieg?

Motivated by current events, this article provides a brief overview of recent attempts to quantify the gains from trade and the costs of trade wars. The simple message is that trade generates large gains and trade wars entail large costs. Recent estimates suggest that the worldwide gains from trade amount to around a quarter of global real income and that a global trade war would destroy almost a quarter of these gains.     

Factors influencing United States comparative advantage

One of the more famous results in international trade is Leontief's demonstration that the conventional wisdom of trade theory—the two-factor Heckscher-Ohlin model, coupled with the empirical judgement that the U.S. is capital-rich—does not appear to provide an explanation of the composition of U.S. trade. A major conclusion of many recent studies is that an adequate model of comparative advantage will be, of necessity, a multi-factor one. This paper examines the implications of a modified multi-factor-proportions model by measuring the simultaneous impact of a variety of factor intensities on the comparative advantage of all U.S. (trading) industries, classified and disaggregated by the 1958 input-output table. The novelty of the study lies in using a binary measure of comparative advantage. In order to by-pass several econometric difficulties, logit analysis is used to estimate the model. The principal conclusion of the paper is that capital-intensity has a significantly positive impact on the comparative advantage of U.S. manufacturing industries and, therefore, that the U.S. is, in fact, relatively capital-rich.     

The impact of U.S. devaluations on the stock prices of multinational corporations

In recent years, multinational corporations (MNCs) have faced several currency realignments including the U.S. dollar devaluations, and the revaluations of the Japanese yen and German mark. These adjustments precipitate defensive measures such as hedging by MNCs. While the strategies and tactics of such firms in adapting to currency realignments have received increasing attention in the literature [4,5,6,7,8], the question of how the stock prices of MNCs react largely has been ignored. This question is important both from the investors' viewpoint of investment timing and from the viewpoint of MNCs' managers relative to their abilities to use outside financing before and after realignment, as well as to the proper timing of such financing.This article investigates the behavior of stock prices of multinational corporations during two U.S. devaluations. Also, a model is presented which isolates the international component of the MNC's stock prices from its domestic component.     

The effect of exchange rate uncertainty on the prices and volume of international trade

By specifying a model of differential risk-bearing by import demand and export supply sides of the market for traded goods, the theoretical impact of exchange risk on both equilibrium prices and quantities is analyzed. For several empirical cases of 1965–1975 U.S. and German trade it is found that exchange rate uncertainty has had a significant impact on prices but no significant effect on the volume of trade. These price effects support previous survey results on the currency denomination of export contracts, namely that with the exception of some U.S. imports, most trade is largely denominated in the exporter's currency.     

The Payoff to America from Globalisation

This article summarizes the economic payoff to the United States from its postwar trade opening and estimates the potential future gains from more opening going forward. To quantify these gains, we survey different methodologies and estimates. We find that trade opening since World War II has added between $800 billion to $1.4 trillion to the US economy, or about $7,000 to $13,000 per household. More speculative estimates of the potential additional gains from removing the rest of US trade barriers range from $400 billion to $1.3 trillion, or about $4,000 to $12,000 per household. Since trade opening permanently raises national income, these gains are enjoyed annually. Trade opening inevitably entails adjustment costs. We estimate that the lifetime cost of all worker dislocations that have been triggered by expanded trade in the United States could be as high as $54 billion, although probably less. The permanent gains from past and potential liberalization easily swamp the modest sums necessary to alleviate the temporary pains of adjustment. In the future as in the past, free trade can significantly raise income – and quality of life – in America.     

An Analysis of Mercosur's Regional Trading Arrangements

After six years of stop‐start negotiations, Mercosur is no closer to signing a regional trading agreement (RTA) with the EU, whilst negotiations to finalise a Free Trade of the Americas Agreement (FTAA) have also stalled. This is due to various factors: economic crises in Mercosur, intransigence by member countries and uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the Doha Round. Estimates from the trade literature predict welfare gains to Mercosur from both RTAs whilst only one study assesses the additional benefits of removing non‐tariff barrier (NTB) trade costs which have remained largely unchallenged within the multilateral forum. In this paper, we improve the treatment of NTB estimates employing a theoretically consistent gravity specification, where calculated tariff‐equivalent estimates are subsequently implemented into a modified computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. Relative to a realistic baseline, and incorporating trade‐induced productivity and capital accumulation effects, we reassess the benefits of both regional initiatives to Mercosur, revisiting the claim that NTB trade cost abolition doubles the ‘standard’ welfare estimates. Contrary to previous studies, the results suggest that an FTAA yields greater gains to Mercosur than an EU RTA whilst the claim of Monteagudo and Watanuki (2003 ) pertaining to trade cost elimination is understated.     

Risk,external adjustment and capital flows

This paper studies the process of external adjustment. I develop an open economy model with endowment and preference shocks that can account for the empirical behavior of real exchange rates, interest rates and consumption in the U.S. and Europe. The model includes cross border holdings of bonds and equity, and financial frictions that impede international risk-sharing. I find that external adjustment following endowment shocks predominantly takes place via trade flows, consistent with the intertemporal approach to the current account. In contrast, preference shocks that change investors' risk aversion induce adjustment via the trade and valuation channels; where the latter includes the effects of unexpected capital gains and loss on existing cross border holdings and changes in the expected future return differentials between foreign assets and liabilities. The model estimates imply that the valuation channel of external adjustment is more important for the U.S. than the trade channel. Consistent with this implication, I show that forecasts of future return differentials contributed most to the volatility of the U.S. net foreign asset position in the post Bretton-Woods era.     

General equilibrium trade modelling with Canada–US transportation costs

Transportation costs are an important topic in international trade, but seldom have researchers paid attention to general equilibrium trade modelling with transportation costs and explored their relevant effects. This paper uses numerical general equilibrium trade model structures to simulate the impacts of transportation costs on welfare and trade for a Canada–US country pair case. We compare two groups of model structures: Armington assumption models and homogeneous goods models. Within these two groups of models, we also compare balanced trade structures to trade imbalance structures and production function transportation costs to iceberg transportation costs. Armington goods models generate more absolute welfare gains from transportation cost elimination than homogeneous goods models. Welfare gains under balanced trade structures are larger in production function transportation cost scenarios than in iceberg transportation cost scenarios, but under trade imbalance structures, welfare gains are greater under iceberg transportation cost scenarios. Canada's welfare gains in the iceberg transportation cost scenario are significantly larger than gains in the production function transportation cost scenario. On trade effects, homogeneous goods models generate more export and import gains, balanced trade structures have more trade variations, and iceberg transportation costs generate more trade effects.     

后危机时代中国对美出口贸易的发展趋势

国际金融危机下由于美国进口增长速度放缓和进口结构发生变化,中国对美出口贸易增长速度放缓,出口结构发生变化,中方贸易顺差下降。后危机时代影响中国对美出口的主要因素还包括美元不断贬值,美国经济增长放缓和消费需求减少,美国贸易政策的改变和中国出口成本的上升,建议加强对美市场的调研、完善对美出口的市场监督机制和及时调整人民币汇率政策。     

Job creation, job destruction, and the real exchange rate

Welfare gains from trade are reduced by adjustment costs associated with factor reallocation, but most studies of the effects of trade on labor markets focus only on net employment change. This paper takes a step toward identifying trade-related adjustment costs by estimating the effects of real exchange rates on labor reallocation using a new model of gross job creation and destruction applied to detailed U.S. manufacturing industries between 1973 and 1993. Trend real exchange rates significantly affect job reallocation but not net employment. Cyclical real exchange rates significantly affect net employment through job destruction only.     

Trading protocols and price discovery: Implicit transaction costs in Indian single stock futures

We show how trading protocols impede the price discovery process in single stock futures as implicit trade costs outweigh explicit costs. Despite the trade volume dominance, trade costs advantage and leverage efficiency in futures markets, single stock futures account for only 35% of the price discovery vis-á-vis the spot market. Futures market's informational efficiency is adversely affected by market frictions in the form of marketwide position limits, minimum contract values, and margin requirements.     

An Examination of Participation in Homebuyer Education and Counseling Services

Homebuyer education and counseling aims to help potential homebuyers understand benefits and risks of homeownership, choose a home and an appropriate mortgage, and build the financial know‐how needed for sustainable homeownership and financial health. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD's) First‐Time Homebuyer Education and Counseling Demonstration found that women and individuals with greater education were generally more likely to participate in services. Enrollees referred to in‐person services are more likely to participate if they are early in the homebuying process or if they planned to purchase a home without a coborrower. They may perceive benefits of services to outweigh the costs of scheduling, traveling to, and attending in‐person services. Enrollees offered remote services (phone, online) are more likely to participate if they are “better off,” having higher mortgage literacy and credit scores. Results may inform agencies' messaging, outreach, and approach to providing services and meeting consumers' needs, federal policy, and interpretation of future impact estimates.     

Do falling iceberg costs explain recent U.S. export growth?

We study empirically and theoretically the growth of U.S. manufacturing exports from 1987 to 2007. We use plant-level data on exporters' export intensity to identify the changes in iceberg costs over this period. Given this change in iceberg costs, we find that a GE model with heterogeneous establishments and dynamic exporting decision from a sunk cost of starting to export is consistent with both aggregate U.S. export growth and the changes in the number and size of U.S. exporters. The model also captures the gradual response of U.S. exports to the cut in iceberg costs. A model with a static exporting decision generates substantially less trade growth and misses out on the timing of export growth. We also study the interplay between changes in the structure of manufacturing and trade. We find that the growth in trade contributed little to the contraction in U.S. manufacturing while changes in the structure of manufacturing from changes in sectoral productivity, capital intensity, idiosyncratic shocks, and corporate taxation reduced U.S. export growth by as much as 10%.     

Migration of skilled workers and innovation: A European Perspective

We study empirically and theoretically the growth of U.S. manufacturing exports from 1987 to 2007. We use plant-level data on exporters' export intensity to identify the changes in iceberg costs over this period. Given this change in iceberg costs, we find that a GE model with heterogeneous establishments and dynamic exporting decision from a sunk cost of starting to export is consistent with both aggregate U.S. export growth and the changes in the number and size of U.S. exporters. The model also captures the gradual response of U.S. exports to the cut in iceberg costs. A model with a static exporting decision generates substantially less trade growth and misses out on the timing of export growth. We also study the interplay between changes in the structure of manufacturing and trade. We find that the growth in trade contributed little to the contraction in U.S. manufacturing while changes in the structure of manufacturing from changes in sectoral productivity, capital intensity, idiosyncratic shocks, and corporate taxation reduced U.S. export growth by as much as 10%.     

Measuring International Trade Costs

The costs of international trade have become an increasingly important item in trade negotiations (under the heading ‘trade facilitation’) and element of trade theory, but definition and measurement of trade costs remain in their infancy. This paper argues that the most conceptually appropriate measure is the gap between cost‐insurance‐freight (cif) and free‐on‐board (fob) values of traded goods, but that this must be measured on a consistent volume of trade. Such data are only available for a few countries. We calculate cif–fob gap values for the three largest trading nations that report such data (Australia, Brazil and the USA). These values provide plausible estimates of ad valorem trade costs for the three importing countries and for all countries’ exports. The estimates indicate that although trade costs have fallen over the last two decades, average trade costs now exceed the average tariff rate on imports into the USA and Australia. Country rankings by the cif–fob gap values differ significantly from those by commonly used proxies for trade costs, such as the indicators of time and cost in the World Bank’s Doing Business database, and analysis based on such proxies is likely to produce misleading results.     

Customs union theory and the nonuniformity of tariffs

Allowance is made for the initial nonuniformity of the tariffs of a union country before it joins a customs union. The reduction of such nonuniformity is a possible source of welfare again distinct from the usual trade creation and trade diversion effects. A net welfare gain from a union may result even when the country's total trade stays unchanged and even when all trade with the outsider ceases. A three-product, small-country model is used, domestic production and consumption substitution between the two importables yielding the import pattern effect that produces the possible gains referred to.     

Trade and technology adoption

This paper endogenizes firms' choices of production technology in what would be a standard Melitz model otherwise. The responses of firms' productivity to trade liberalization are heterogenous: exporters, on average, improve their level of technology adoption, whereas nonexporters downgrade their level of technology adoption. The degree to which firms adjust production technology depends on domestic market size, export destination market size, trade impediments, and export status. The conflicting empirical results of the impact of trade liberalization on exporters' productivity are rationalized by showing that changes in different trade costs (variable vs. fixed costs) affect firms' productivity differently. We calibrate the model's parameters to match firms' characteristics in the global economy. The results indicate that endogenous productivity increases the gains from trade liberalization.     

Structural estimation and the border puzzle

We revisit Anderson and van Wincoop's [Anderson, James and Eric van Wincoop, 2003. Gravity with gravitas: A solution to the border puzzle. American Economic Review 93, 170-192] claim that structural estimation solves the U.S.-Canadian border puzzle. We find this claim tenuous, as the proposed solution attributes to structural estimation the effects of added U.S. data and an assumption that U.S. and Canadian border costs are symmetric. Estimated Canadian and U.S. multilateral resistance measures, which are the foundation of Anderson and van Wincoop's argument, depend critically on the symmetric costs assumption. Even accepting symmetry, we show that structurally consistent estimates of the Canadian border effect are only marginally smaller than the OLS estimates when we exclude the (arguably) non-comparable U.S. data.