论比较优势的成本基础——从生产成本向“全成本”的拓展

贸易理论的历史演进表明,比较优势是一国参与国际分工和贸易的基本动因。古典、新古典和新贸易理论分别从劳动生产率、要素禀赋、生产规模等不同视角论证了基于生产成本的比较优势,进而可表达为"相对生产成本不等式"。随着制度、生态环境、"可持续性"等要素在国际贸易中日趋重要,使用制度要素所形成的交易成本、使用生态环境要素所形成的环境成本、耗费"可持续性"要素所形成的代际成本也逐步成为比较优势的成本基础。于是,可将使用或耗费广义要素的代价理解为"全成本",它构成了一国参与国际分工和贸易的比较优势的基础。     

Comparative Advantage and Heterogeneous Firms

This paper examines how country, industry, and firm characteristics interact in general equilibrium to determine nations' responses to trade liberalization. When firms possess heterogeneous productivity, countries differ in relative factor abundance, and industries vary in factor intensity, falling trade costs induce reallocations of resources both within and across industries and countries. These reallocations generate substantial job turnover in all sectors, spur relatively more creative destruction in comparative advantage industries than in comparative disadvantage industries, and magnify ex ante comparative advantage to create additional welfare gains from trade. The improvements in aggregate productivity as countries liberalize dampen and can even reverse the real-wage losses of scarce factors.     

ON THE OUTPUT EFFECTS OF BARRIERS TO TRADE*

We study the macroeconomic effects of international trade policy by integrating a Hecksher–Ohlin trade model into an optimal‐growth framework. The model predicts that a more open economy will have higher factor productivity. Furthermore, there is a “selective development trap” to which countries may or may not converge, depending on policy. Income at the development trap falls as trade barriers increase. Hence, cross‐country differences in barriers to trade may help explain the dispersion of per capita income observed across countries. The effects are quantified, and we show that protectionism can explain a relevant fraction of TFP and long‐run income differentials across countries.     

Uncertainty,trade integration and the optimal level of protection in a Ricardian model with a continuum of goods

This paper analyzes the effects of increasing trade integration on individual utility when the international specialization pattern is stochastic, i.e. when the range of goods each country produces depends on the realization of a random variable. Using a Ricardian continuum of goods model it is shown that under uncertainty a trade-off emerges. As in the standard deterministic model, higher trade integration reduces prices and increases expected real income. However, higher trade integration, reducing the number of active sectors in the economy, also increases the displacement cost the worker suffers when the sector she is employed into has to close down because, ex-post, the foreign country's competing sector results to be more efficient. Two are the main results of the model. First, it is shown that, under uncertainty and job specificity, increasing trade integration is not always welfare enhancing. Second, there exists an optimal level of protection that is higher the smaller the price reduction induced by trade integration and the more technologically similar are countries.     

International Asset Trade,Capital Income Taxation,and Specialization Patterns

This paper constructs a small economy version of dynamic Heckscher‐Ohlin models with overlapping generations and analyzes effects of capital income taxation on the specialization pattern of the country. It is shown that once international asset trade is allowed, in the presence of international technological asymmetries, a small country eventually leads to perfect specialization in our overlapping generations model. It is also shown that the residence‐based tax has no effect on the specialization pattern while the source‐based tax has a negative effect on capital accumulation and thereby it can affect the specialization pattern of the small country.     

Output/Endowment and Commodity/Factor Price Relationships and Welfare in a Multilateral Trade Model with Partial Factor Mobility

A multilateral model of trade with both commodity flows and partial mobility of factor flows is set up. This model is used to develop factor endowment/output relationships as well as commodity/factor price relationships. Welfare consequences of these parametric shifts are examined. The model is built on the customs union framework which involves three countries and both commodity and factor flows. Owing to spillover effects in multilateral trade models, many nontraditional results are obtained. Many developed countries accept skilled and unskilled migrants from other countries. These migrants are generally accepted on a quota system. Moreover, it has been established that an increase in the migrant quota in the presence of factor mobility may raise or lower the output and welfare in the country not receiving migrants. In fact it is shown that the non‐migrant receiving country could be immiserized due to loss of capital. The main message of this paper is that in a multilateral trade framework there exist international spillover effects which must be taken into consideration in national policymaking.     

Entrepreneurs,jobs, and trade

We propose a simple theory of endogenous firm productivity, unemployment, and top income inequality. High-talented individuals choose to become self-employed entrepreneurs and acquire more managerial (human) capital; whereas low-talented individuals become workers and face the prospect of equilibrium unemployment. In a two-country global economy, trade openness raises firm productivity, increases top income inequality, and may reduce welfare in the country exporting the good with lower relative labor-market frictions. Trade openness reduces firm productivity, lowers top income inequality, and necessarily raises welfare in the other country. The effect of trade on unemployment is ambiguous. Unilateral job-creating policies increase welfare in both countries. However, they reduce unemployment and raise top income inequality in the policy-active country; and reduce top income inequality while increasing unemployment in the policy-passive country.     

分工演进对贸易政策的影响分析——基于交易成本的考虑

贸易政策同贸易理论是紧密联系在一起的.引入交易成本来分析分工演进对贸易政策的影响,不考虑交易成本条件下,贸易自由对于分工演进的国家是有利的;考虑交易成本条件下,随着分工演进,国家之间更加倾向于贸易谈判,最终结果为贸易自由化.但是由于各国交易效率不同,交易效率高的国家在贸易中获得的利益更多,而交易效率低的就会实行更多贸易保护.因此,我国需要降低交易成本,加强分工演进的速度,处理好国际之间的贸易摩擦.     

Trade Openness,Corruption and Factor Abundance: Evidence from a Dynamic Panel

Using the Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson–Vanek (HOSV) framework, this paper illustrates a relationship between corruption and the pattern of international trade that depends on the factor endowments of countries. The relationship between trade openness and corruption is empirically investigated by using a panel dataset on trade openness, corruption and capital–labor ratio, and applying estimation techniques developed for dynamic panels. The regression results provide strong support to the hypothesis that the effect of corruption on trade openness depends on relative factor abundance.     

A Neo-Heckscher–Ohlin Model of Trade with Endogenous Production Patterns*

We propose a Neo-Heckscher–Ohlin (HO) model of trade that combines comparative endowment advantage, comparative technological advantage, international capital mobility and trade costs. Using an inframarginal approach, we produce a partition of the exogenous parameter space in a host of parameter value subsets that demarcate the various equilibrium patterns of production and trade. The results are startling! They suggest that production within the diversification cone – a key assumption of the Heckscher–Ohlin theory that is required for its core propositions (such as factor price equalisation) to hold – may only prevail on the razor's edge, or under exceptional circumstances. In addition, our findings nominate a mechanism by which improvements in transaction efficiency facilitate international trade thereby stimulating cross-country division of labour. Contrary to other generalisations of the Heckscher–Ohlin (such as the various derivatives of the Kemp–Jones model of trade), our model does not assume a purely Ricardian character: comparative endowment advantage may determine the pattern of trade even in the presence of opposing technological differences, as long as total factor productivity coefficients adjusted for transaction efficiency and factor intensity do not confer unambiguous comparative (technological) advantage. Still, ‘intensity-efficiency’-adjusted comparative technological advantage supersedes factor endowments in determining the flow of trade.     

COSTLY INTERMEDIATION AND THE POVERTY OF NATIONS*

This article has two goals: (i) to reduce the 7‐fold productivity differential required to explain the observed 33‐fold income difference between the richest and poorest countries of the world; and (ii) to explain cross‐country differences in the capital‐output ratio. To achieve the first goal we modify the production function of the standard neoclassical growth model to include public capital whose provision is subject to intermediation costs. For the second goal we distort private investment by introducing credit frictions. The model, quantified using cross‐country data, generates an income gap of 33 with productivity differences of only 3 under the measured variations in public and private capital. The required productivity gap declines even further, to 2.1, when we introduce a home‐production sector. On the second goal, however, credit frictions do a poor job of explaining cross‐country variations in the capital‐output ratio.     

The links between openness and productivity in Mediterranean countries

We examine the relation between the international trade, the foreign direct investment and the total factor productivity of the Mediterranean partner countries of Europe within the framework of a cointegrated panel model. The results, obtained from data on seven Mediterranean partner countries of Europe (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey), show that FDI and human capital are complementary in the acquisition of productivity gains. We identify the threshold level of human capital from which the received foreign investments generate beneficial effects. In a more general way, the improvement of the total factor productivity via the international openness results only from the indirect effects related to the transfer of technology.     

Linking Absolute and Comparative Advantage to Intra-Industry Trade Theory*

Two countries, which differ with respect to domestic demand for two groups of differentiated products, are considered in a setting of monopolistic competition where international trade is subject to transaction costs. It is shown that relative differences in demand determine the trade pattern. Each country is a net exporter of that group for which domestic demand is relatively larger-where the country has a comparative home-market advantage. Absolute differences in demand determine relative wages. Thus, the paper argues that the notions of absolute and comparative advantage as found in traditional trade theory also have meaning in new trade theory.     

Neoclassical Growth, Manufacturing Agglomeration, and Terms of Trade

This study reverses the prediction of geography and growth models that trade integration may cause income divergence. Moreover, a new dynamic welfare gain of trade openness is identified. These results are obtained from embedding a new economic geography model into a neoclassical growth model. Starting from symmetric countries, a country that accumulates more capital than the other increases its home market size, improves its terms of trade, and lowers its relative consumption price index, because trade costs drive a wedge in between relative producer and consumption price indices. Both effects in turn tend to increase its marginal revenue product of capital relative to the other country (divergence forces), while factor substitution diminishes its marginal revenue product of capital (convergence force). Reducing trade costs decreases the wedge and weakens the divergence forces, while the convergence force is unaffected. Hence, divergence is more likely with higher rather than lower trade costs.     

Factor Accumulation and Trade: Dynamic Comparative Advantage with Endogenous Physical and Human Capital*

This article develops a two‐country endogenous growth model with accumulation of both physical and human capital. We establish the existence of two‐country balanced growth equilibria with physical and human capital in which a static and dynamic version of the Heckscher–Ohlin (HO) hypothesis hold true. We also show the existence of unbalanced growth equilibria in which the static and dynamic HO hypotheses can be violated. The multiplicity of paths with international trade emerge as a result of the intertemporal no‐arbitrage condition when factor prices are equalized across countries.     

International Productivity Differences,Trade and the Distributions of Factor Endowments

This paper presents a model of task assignment and worker matching to explore how the distributions of labor endowments within countries influence aggregate productivity and international trade patterns. Higher moments of the skill distribution have complex relationships with the organization of the labor force. First, labor endowments skewed toward high abilities exhibit positive assortment of workers across tasks, while countries with distributions of ability skewed towards low abilities exhibit underemployment. Second, greater dispersion improves aggregate productivity in countries that experience underemployment, but worsens productivity where there is assortative assignment. Furthermore, the shape and size of factor endowments are shown to jointly determine a global pattern of comparative advantage. Countries are more likely to export their abundant factors when labor markets organize heterogenous workers effectively. These predictions receive empirical support from Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) countries using measures of diversity constructed from educational attainment.     

Trade and Global Income Inequality with Frictional Labor Markets: A Lesson from the Canada–US Free Trade Agreement

This paper develops a two-country trade model with frictional labor market structures to investigate the link between increased openness to trade and cross-country income inequality. Calibrated to US–Canadian data, the model simulation results show that the Canada–US Free Trade Agreement benefited Canada, the country with relatively higher capital intensity, more due to its capacity to flexibly expand in response to an increase in product demand. The results from counterfactual experiments indicate that increased capital intensity in the US is expected to increase gains from trade in both countries while making the distribution of gains less unequal.     

Drivers of the real effective exchange rates in high and upper‐middle income countries

This paper revisits the nexus between real effective exchange rate (REER) and total factor productivity (TFP) by controlling for trade openness, financial development and natural resources rents. We use a sample of 60 high‐income and upper‐middle income countries over the period 1995–2015 and employ the GMM estimation framework. Our results advance the empirical knowledge on the drivers of REER by providing robust evidence that the impact of TFP is not uniform across different country clusters. We find that in high‐income countries, increasing productivity causes the REER to depreciate hence becoming more trade competitive while the opposite is true for upper‐middle income countries. Furthermore, financial development and natural resources rents have no meaningful impact in the case of upper‐middle income countries but retain a significant effect in high‐income countries. Trade openness plays a key role in explaining the variation in REER in both country clusters.     

The impact of trade liberalization on employment,capital, and productivity dynamics: evidence from the uruguayan manufacturing sector

This paper studies the impact of trade liberalization on labor and capital gross flows and productivity in the Uruguayan Manufacturing Sector. Higher international exposure implied a slightly higher job creation, an important increase in job and capital destruction, and an increase in productivity. Unions dampened these effects. Although not associated with higher creation rates, unions were effective in reducing job and capital destruction but they also reduced productivity growth. Industry concentration mitigated the destruction of jobs but had no effects on job creation or in capital and productivity dynamics.     

The brain drain and the world distribution of income

Skilled emigration (or brain drain) from developing to developed countries is becoming the dominant pattern of international migration today. Such migration is likely to affect the world distribution of income both directly, through the mobility of people, and indirectly, as the prospect of migration affects the rate of return to education in both the sending and receiving economies. This migration pattern will therefore affect human capital accumulation and fertility decisions in both the sending and receiving economies. This paper analyzes these effects in a dynamic two country model of the world economy where agents in both countries make optimal fertility and human capital decisions. The implications of the analysis for the world distribution of income are derived in the light of recent empirical findings of the brain drain literature. The analysis shows that the current trend towards predominantly skilled emigration from poor to rich countries may in the long run increase inequality in the world distribution of income as relatively poor countries grow large in terms of population. In the short run however, it is possible for world inequality to fall due to rises in GDP per capita in large developing economies with sufficiently low skilled emigration rates.