比较优势与我国服务贸易研究

比较优势理论是国际贸易中的一个重要理论，由于服务贸易与货物贸易不同，因此决定服务贸易的比较优势也有所不同。本分析了比较优势在服务贸易中的特点，存在的问题以及如何更好地将比较优势理论应用于我国服务贸易。     

服务贸易与商品贸易的互补性及贸易平衡新解

国际分工的演进导致贸易比较优势出现新的变化，贸易模式也更加复杂。在国际贸易新格局下，贸易平衡表现为服务贸易和商品贸易互补下的总体平衡。随着国际分工的日趋深入，贸易失衡也将主要表现为服务贸易和商品贸易之间的结构性失衡。这与两者自由化进程的不对称密切相关。国际分工与贸易的新视野对于理解贸易平衡、解决贸易失衡具有启发意义。     

中国对外贸易优势——基于国际分工视角的再研究

中国对外贸易优势的研究要么结合国际直接投资,要么分析中国出口贸易的RCA指标。本文从国际分工的视角出发,运用国际专业化指标,探讨了中国对外贸易的比较优势。发现中国对外贸易的比较优势主要集中在消费品领域,2004年,资本品领域开始具备了一定的比较优势。中国对外贸易的比较劣势主要集中在半成品以及零部件领域。通过国别研究,我们发现,中国对亚洲国家和地区的对外贸易中,半成品以及零部件领域具有较大的比较劣势。中国对外贸易比较优势形成的关键原因在于加工贸易的贸易政策、外商直接投资企业的作用日益显著以及中国融入了亚洲生产网络等。     

Migration and servicification: Do immigrant employees spur firm exports of services?

Services play an increasingly important role in production, employment and international trade but are subject to substantially higher trade costs relative to manufactured goods. Knowledge of how these trade costs can be mitigated is important for facilitating trade of services. In this paper, we analyse the role of immigrant employees as facilitators of firm exports of services, a role that remains largely unexamined. We bridge the gap in existing research by drawing on new data for nearly 30,000 Swedish firms during the period 1998–2007 within a heterogeneous firm framework. The results have important policy implications. As the multilateral approach to facilitating trade is challenged and more countries are imposing measures to restrict the cross‐country mobility of people, policymakers may need to find new ways to promote exports of services. Our results indicate that immigrant employees spur firms' export of services activities: hiring one additional foreign‐born worker can increase services exports by approximately 2.5 per cent, on average, with a stronger effect found for skilled and newly arrived immigrants. Therefore, policymakers could leverage the findings of this study to implement initiatives that utilise high‐skilled immigrants to promote services exports.     

美国对外贸易的理念和货物贸易的基本格局

自由贸易是美国对外贸易的基本理念。贸易自由化是战后美国对外贸易政策的基本特征,原因在于贸易自由化每年给美国带来1万亿美元左右的收益。对美国货物贸易的基本格局可以从五个方面认识:美国是世界上进出口规模最大的国家;美国进口规模比出口规模对世界经济的影响更大;美国是世界上最大的贸易逆差国,享受了世界最多的物质财富;美国贸易条件的变动表明对外贸易格局有利于美国;美国进口规模扩大与产业结构升级的结合演变为美国结构性增长优势。     

中国企业全球攻略:“三位一体”廓清贸易障碍

当今形势下,全球化战略成为中国企业的必然选择。中国企业应从战略高度上,以全球为市场、以学习为手段,来积蓄国际化经营的知识经验和管理技能,培育能带来持久竞争优势的战略资源与核心能力,构筑全新的竞争优势。但金融危机爆发以来,国际贸易保护主义重新抬头,各国因自身利益而产生的贸易摩擦越来越多。作为世界贸易大国,受国际国内双重因素影响,我国也面临着国际贸易摩擦的高发期,贸易摩擦日益成为阻碍我国企业全球化战略发展的消极因素。为有效破解国际贸易壁垒,妥善处理贸易摩擦问题,推动国内企业向国际型企业成功转变,必须从国家、行业、企业三个层面入手化解国际贸易摩擦。     

On the origins of comparative advantage

This paper proposes a simple theory of international trade with endogenous productivity differences across countries. The core of our analysis lies in the determinants of the division of labor. We consider a world economy comprising two large countries, with a continuum of goods and one factor of production, labor. Each good is characterized by its complexity, defined as the number of tasks that must be performed to produce one unit. There are increasing returns to scale in the performance of each task, which creates gains from specialization, and uncertainty in the enforcement of each contract, which create transaction costs. The trade-off between these two forces pins down the size of productive teams across sectors in each country. Under free trade, the country where teams are larger specializes in the more complex goods. In our model, it is the country where the product of institutional quality and human per worker capital is larger. Hence, better institutions and more educated workers are complementary sources of comparative advantage in the more complex industries.     

Carbon policy and the structure of global trade

Alternative perspectives on the structure of international trade have important implications for the evaluation of climate policy. In this paper, we assess climate policy in the context of three important alternative trade formulations. First is a Heckscher‐Ohlin model based on trade in homogeneous products, which establishes the traditional neoclassical view on comparative advantage. Second is an Armington model based on regionally differentiated goods, which is a popular specification for numerical simulations of trade policy. Third is a Melitz model based on monopolistic competition and firm heterogeneity. This heterogeneous‐firms framework is adopted in many contemporary theoretic and empirical investigations in international trade. As we show in this paper, the three alternative trade formulations have important implications for the assessment of climate policy with respect to competitive effects for energy‐intensive production (and hence carbon leakage) as well as the transmission of policy burdens across countries.     

中国文化贸易结构和贸易竞争力分析

基于文化产品和服务进出口数据,对中国文化贸易结构、国际市场占有率、贸易竞争力指数、显示性比较优势指数的分析表明,尽管中国是文化产品出口第一大国,但文化贸易结构不合理,文化产业总体国际竞争力较弱且发展不平衡;中国文化贸易的竞争优势主要体现在手工艺品、设计、视觉艺术品和新媒体这些外围的文化产品中,具有核心内容的影视媒介、音乐媒介、出版物及版权、文化休闲娱乐服务等文化出口比重低、竞争力弱。     

Speed Intensity and the Rise of the Chinese Economies

Producers of speed‐intensive goods, e.g. clothing or electronics, face markets that are in constant flux due to changing fashion or technology. Throughout the twentieth century, Chinese business networks have had a comparative advantage in producing speed‐intensive goods due to their quick reaction time. This comparative advantage was of relatively little value prior to the Second World War, but since the war, international telephone and air services have made international trade in speed‐intensive goods practical. This has caused the demand for speed‐intensive goods on the international market to grow at an extremely rapid pace. This growth in demand can explain the post‐Second World War economic booms experienced by Hong Kong, Taiwan and finally China.     

Comparative Advantage and the Gains from Financial Trade: A Reappraisal

Emerging market crises have suggested that a national benefit‐cost assessment of external financial liberalisation could well prove unfavourable. This paper re‐examines the principle of comparative advantage in its application to financial trade to seek guidance on measures that might permit a fuller realisation of the potential benefits involved. Drawing a parallel with Balasubramanyam's work on the gains from FDI and international migration we distinguish between those arising in financial trade from the net transfer of capital, and those deriving from the contemporaneous exchange of financial claims or services of equivalent value. In the first interpretation a country's comparative advantage is manifested by its role in ‘intertemporal’ trade (as a borrower or lender). Our alternative emphasis is on the contractual risk‐return characteristics of the financial claims exchanged. This perspective is applied firstly to portfolio diversification gains arising from further international stock market integration. Secondly, price risk management for developing countries in international primary commodity trade is discussed. Both applications imply the need for significant institutional development but could realise approximately contemporaneous gains reminiscent both of those involved in merchandise trade and in the skills and product (or service) flows that Balasubramanyam has emphasised in relation to FDI and international migration.     

Global production sharing: Exploring Australia's competitive edge

Cross‐border dispersion of production processes within vertically integrated global industries (“global production sharing”) has been an increasingly important structural feature of economic globalisation in the recent decades. This paper examines patterns and determinants of global production sharing with an emphasis on how Australian manufacturing fits into global production networks (GPNs). Though Australia is a minor player in GPNs, there is evidence that Australian manufacturing has a distinct competitive edge in specialised, skill‐intensive tasks in several industries such as aircraft, medical devices, machine tools, measuring and scientific equipment and photographic equipment. Specialisation in high‐value‐to‐weight components and final goods within GPNs, which are suitable for air transport, helps Australian manufacturing to overcome the “tyranny of distance” in world trade. Being predominantly “relationship specific,” Australian GPN exports are not significantly susceptible to real exchange rate appreciation.     

再论“国际贸易的全成本”

从内涵看,"国际贸易的全成本"是某种物品的产权在跨国转移中,发生于国际贸易过程,进而涉及生产和消费、经济和生态、今人和后人,使用一切资源要素的代价总和;从外延看,"国际贸易的全成本"是以国际贸易中的生产成本、交易成本、环境成本和代际成本等为子系统的动态开放系统。其中,使用劳动、资本、土地等传统要素的机会成本为生产成本;使用制度要素的机会成本为交易成本;使用生态环境要素的机会成本为环境成本;耗费"可持续性"要素的机会成本为代际成本。贸易理论和现实的发展表明,国际贸易的动因是比较优势,比较优势的本质是比较成本优势,它反映了不同国家同种产品的机会成本差异。比较优势理论的"硬核"在于"比较之比较",其"外围保护带"则表现为对资源要素和成本外延的界定。为化解比较优势理论面临的种种冲突和困境,有必要拓展它的成本观,使其成为进步而非退化的研究纲领。因此,使用或耗费广义要素而形成的"全成本"是一国参与国际分工和贸易的比较优势的基础。     

Product Complexity,Quality of Institutions and the Protrade Effect of Immigrants

The paper assesses the trade‐creating impact of foreign‐born residents on the international imports and exports of the French regions where they are settled. The protrade effect of immigrants is investigated along two intertwined dimensions: the complexity of traded goods and the quality of institutions in partner countries. The trade‐enhancing impact of immigrants is, on average, more salient when they come from a country with weak institutions. However, this positive impact is especially large on the imports of simple products. When we turn to complex goods, for which the information channel conveyed by immigrants is the most valuable, immigration enhances imports regardless of the quality of institutions in the partner country. Regarding exports, immigrants substitute for weak institutions on both simple and complex goods.     

Buyer-seller relationships in international trade: Evidence from U.S. States' exports and business-class travel

International trade has become increasingly dependent on the transmission of complex information, often realized via face-to-face communication. This paper provides novel evidence for the importance of in-person business meetings in international trade. Interactions among trade partners entail a fixed cost of trade, but at the same time they generate relationship capital, which adds bilateral specific value to the traded products. Differences in the face-to-face communication intensity of traded goods, bilateral travel costs and foreign market size determine the optimal amount of interaction between trade partners. Using U.S. state level data on international business-class air travel as a measure of in-person business meetings, I find robust evidence that the demand for business-class air travel is directly related to volume and composition of exports in differentiated products. I also find that trade flows in R&D intensive manufactures and goods facing contractual frictions are most dependent on face-to-face meetings. The econometric identification exploits the cross-state variation in bilateral exports and business-class air travelers by foreign country and time period, circumventing any spurious correlation induced by cross-country differences driving aggregate travel and trade patterns.     

Market Structure and Market Access

We explore an issue at the nexus of domestic competition policy and international trade, the interaction between goods trade and market power in domestic trade and distribution sectors. We examine the effect of variations in conditions of domestic competition in services on trade volumes in goods in the cases of both linear and nonlinear import demand, including standard form CES‐based gravity models of bilateral trade flows. Theory suggests a set of linkages between service‐sector pricing and goods trade supported by econometrics involving imports of 22 OECD countries vis‐a‐vis 69 exporters. Competition in distribution services affects the volume of trade in goods. Additionally, because of interaction between tariffs and pricing, the market structure of the domestic service sector becomes increasingly important as tariffs are reduced. Indeed, depending on the degree of competition, market access concessions on tariffs may be effectively undone in some cases by changes in margins. For exporters, we find that service competition in destination markets matters most for exporters from smaller, poorer countries. Our results also suggest that while negotiated agreements leading to cross‐border services liberalisation may boost goods trade as well, they may also lead to a fall in goods trade when such liberalisation involves FDI leading to increased service sector concentration.     

Determinants of Export Performance in East and Southeast Asia

This paper examines the determinants of exports in eight East and Southeast Asian economies, with an emphasis on the increasing importance of parts and components in total exports. To see whether exports in parts and components are ‘special’ and to allow comparisons, export equations are estimated for three different export categories: total merchandise exports, manufacturing exports and exports of machinery and transport equipment (SITC 7). The analysis is based on data for 1993–2008, a period over which parts and components trade burgeoned. The estimations indicate that the growing importance in the export composition of parts and components within vertically integrated cross‐border production processes has tended to weaken the nexus of real exchange rate and export performance. World demand and supply‐side factors, including foreign direct investment, tend to become more crucial in determining export performance.     

国际分工对产业结构演进的影响及其对我国的启示——基于新兴工业化国家跨国面板数据的经验分析

从需求角度探讨了国际分工与产业结构演变的关系,提出国际分工主要通过直接效应和间接效应,以及由此衍生的收入效应、关联效应和替代效应来影响一国产业结构变化的理论假说。采用20世纪80年代陆续进入工业化成熟期的15个新兴工业化国家的跨国面板数据进行了实证检验,发现这些新兴工业化国家在产业结构向服务经济转型的同时,制造业的比较优势和外贸依存度却出现了下降趋势,国内最终消费占比呈现上升趋势。其经济含义表明:新兴工业化国家如果过度强化在国际分工中的制造国地位,长期依靠商品贸易来拉动经济增长,可能阻碍产业结构由工业经济向服务经济的转型;而随着制造业比较优势的下降,如果减少对商品贸易的依赖,更多地依靠国内需求来发展经济,对于产业结构的转型将有正面的促进作用。以上结论对于我国经济结构的调整具有重要的借鉴意义。     

A general equilibrium model of bilateral trade with strategic public investment in commercial infrastructure

We explore how public investment in commercial infrastructure affects the composition of trade between countries. To this end, we develop a model of bilateral trade in which two countries produce, consume, and trade a continuum of goods. Goods are produced by a single homogeneous factor, labor, the productivity of which depends on the quality of the country’s commercial infrastructure, broadly conceived to encompass transportation, communication, and power transmission networks; regulatory and legal institutions; and basic research and educational systems. Countries may improve the quality of their commercial infrastructures through increased public investment. However, returns on these investments are constrained by fixed ‘natural’ endowments, with the better-endowed country enjoying greater labor productivity for a given level of public investment. We begin by analyzing optimal investment in public infrastructure in one country when public investment by the trading partner is fixed. We find that, ceteris paribus, greater public investment in commercial infrastructure raises general labor productivity, leading to gains in workers’ real income. We then analyze a non-cooperative game in which both countries strategically vary public investment in commercial infrastructure. We find that, in a Nash game, the better-endowed country optimally spends more on infrastructure and produces the goods requiring the greatest labor productivity. However, in a Stackelberg game, the results are ambiguous. An empirical analysis based on recent international trade data supports our theoretical finding that investment in public infrastructure is positively related to the export of ‘high-end’ goods.     

Composition of trade flows and the effectiveness of fiscal devaluation

We empirically explore whether the magnitude of the effects of fiscal devaluation, which consists of reducing the employers’ social security contribution rate and increasing the value‐added tax rate, depends on the composition of trade flows. Our sample comprises data on bilateral balances of trade between 28 European Union (EU) Member States and their main EU trade partners over the 2000–14 period. We use robust ordinary least squares regressions, controlling for the country‐pair and time fixed effects, to test whether there are differences in the sizes of relationships between these taxation forms and bilateral trade balances for different types of goods, by distinguishing between: (i) consumer, intermediate and capital goods; and (ii) labour and capital‐intensive goods. Our results show that the overall effectiveness of fiscal devaluation depends on the composition of trade flows. Value‐added tax is more strongly (positively) associated with (bilateral) balances of trade in consumer goods, compared to balances of trade in capital and intermediate goods. The employers’ contribution rate, in contrast, is more tightly (negatively) related to balances of trade in capital goods. The latter finding also holds true for trade balances of labour‐intensive goods compared to balances of capital‐intensive goods.