The growth effect of trade openness on African countries: Evidence from using an instrumental variable panel smooth transition model

This paper assesses the relationship between trade openness and economic growth in Africa by accounting for the heterogeneity of African countries. In addition, the paper contributes to the literature on trade openness and economic growth nexus by applying the instrumental variable panel smooth transition regression, a methodology that accounts for nonlinearity and endogeneity in the relationship between the two variables. The results of the empirical analysis reveal that the investment ratio is a channel through which trade openness affects economic growth in the African continent. In addition, the relationship between trade openness and economic growth varies according to the degree of a country's development in Africa. The study finds a negative relationship between openness and growth in low-income countries. Conversely, for upper-income countries, the coefficients of trade indicators are positive and statistically significant. The results indicate that African countries are not homogeneous, especially concerning trade openness and economic growth nexus.     

Is trade liberalization a solution to the unemployment problem?

This paper examines how trade liberalization affects the growth rate of sectoral employment in developed and developing countries. The estimation results imply that trade openness in the form of higher trade volumes has not been successful in generating jobs in developing countries. The overall weak, negative employment response to trade volumes may be explained by the negative output response to trade openness in these countries. Our estimates also indicate that higher trade volumes have adverse effect on industrial employment in developed countries. Moreover, while they have positive effect on employment in industry and services in developing countries, trade barriers have adverse effect on employment growth in services for developed countries. Our overall results imply that while trade barriers have relatively little adverse effects and/or in some case a positive effect on employment both in developing and developed countries, higher trade volumes have an adverse effect on industrial employment in developed economies. Thus, trade openness is not in itself a solution to the unemployment problems of developing countries and yet it has not been the prime factor to blame for the lower employment levels in developed countries.     

Trade partner diversification and growth: How trade links matter

We analyze the effects of a country’s export connections on its income growth using trade partner diversification (TPD) measures that capture the country’s relative importance in the international trade network. On top of the standard trade openness measures, TPD measures are shown to enter growth regressions positively and significantly, where one standard deviation increase in TPD is associated with a 1–1.5 percentage point increase in the annual growth rate. Threshold analyses show that TPD measures are positively and significantly correlated with growth in countries that have low financial depth, high inflation, low levels of human capital, or high trade openness.     

Can openness be an engine of sustained high growth rates and inflation?: Evidence from Japan and Korea

The effects of increasing openness on the growth rates of output and of the price level are examined for Japan and Korea. The framework of analysis is a seven-variable vector autoregressive (VAR) model, and the effects of changes in openness are evaluated by computing impulse response functions (IRFs). For both countries, shocks to trade openness are found to have significant, negative effects on economic growth and inflation in the short run, but no longer-run effects. Openness measures in financial markets also have negative effects on economic growth and inflation in Korea, whereas the effects are not significant in Japan. The findings appear consistent with some models in which a domestic economy may suffer a loss due to increased openness of an economy.     

Determinants of obesity in Brazil: the effects of trade liberalization and socio-economic variables

This article aims to evaluate a possible relation between increased Brazilian trade openness and increasing observed rates of overweight and obesity during the last 25 years. We develop an economic model where formal trade barriers are eliminated, and resulting sociocultural outcomes such as the adoption of westernized lifestyle in traditional non-western countries prevails, which could imply a health externality. In order to empirically analyse the influence of trade flows on overweight and obesity in Brazil, a balanced fixed-effects panel model has been estimated. Data for the 26 Brazilian states plus the Federal District are run for 1988/1989, 2002 and 2008. We found that an increase in trade openness leads to an increase in overweight and obesity ratios in Brazil. Hence results seem to point that there is a health externality in Brazil due to trade liberalization. However, more consistent evidence may be necessary to convince politicians and policymakers that any interference will be necessary to correct this externality.     

Trade openness reduces growth volatility when countries are well diversified

This paper addresses the mechanisms by which trade openness affects growth volatility. Using a diverse set of export concentration measures, we present strong evidence pointing to an important role for export diversification in conditioning the effect of trade openness on growth volatility. Indeed, the effect of openness on volatility is shown to be negative for a significant proportion of countries with relatively diversified export baskets.     

Capital mobility,openness, and saving-investment relationship in Asia

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the relationship between openness to trade and saving-investment behaviour in Asia during the period 1990–2006. We use this relationship to examine whether those Asian countries that are more open to trade and enjoy less trade barriers have also higher degree of capital mobility. Cluster analysis is used to classify the countries into different groups according to the share of trade in their gross domestic products and their average tariff rates. The goal is to place the countries that are similar to each other in terms of their trade policy in one group. We apply the Generalized Least Square (GLS) technique to a set of balanced panel error correction models to estimate the short- and long-run relationship between saving and investment. The estimation results indicate that there exist long-run equilibrium relationships between domestic saving and investment in all groups regardless of their degree of trade openness. Moreover, contrary to Amirkhalkhali and Dar (2007) for the case of OECD, we find out that more openness in terms of trade policy is associated with higher degree of capital mobility for the case of Asian countries. One policy implication of this result for the Asian economies is that trade openness can be used as a strategy to attract capital from abroad. Our findings also confirm the prediction of new open economy macroeconomic models regarding the short- and long-run behaviour of current account.     

A Welfare Ranking of Multilateral Reductions in Real and Tariff Trade Barriers when Firms are Heterogenous

Trade liberalization comes about through reductions in various types of trade barriers. This paper introduces, apart from the customary real trade costs (i.e. iceberg and fixed export costs), two revenue generating trade barriers (i.e. an ad valorem tariff and a trade license) into a standard heterogeneous‐firms‐trade model with Pareto distributed productivities. We derive analytical welfare rankings of all four liberalization channels for an equal effect on two openness measures, for any trade cost level and while all four barriers are simultaneously present, i.e. for any initial equilibrium. We show that when openness is measured at retail prices, not border prices, the welfare rankings are sensitive to the degree of efficiency in revenue redistribution, e.g. the share of tariff revenues wasted on rent‐seeking activities. As a result, multilateral tariff reductions can switch from the least to the most preferred mode of liberalization. Among the other three barriers we establish a universal welfare ranking for any strictly positive level of revenue redistribution and for either measure of openness.     

Takeoffs

This paper identifies factors associated with takeoff—a sustained period of high growth following a period of stagnation. Countries that experience takeoffs average 2.3% annual growth following their stagnation episodes, while those that do not average 0%. Using probit, we find that de jure trade openness is positively and significantly associated with takeoffs. A one‐standard‐deviation increase in de jure trade openness is associated with a 55% increase in the probability of a takeoff in our default specification. Capital account openness encourages takeoff responses, but measures of de facto trade openness are found to be poor predictors of takeoffs. We also examine the determinants of nations achieving “sustained” takeoffs; i.e. those lasting eight years or longer. Takeoffs in countries with more commodity‐intensive output bundles are less likely to be sustained, suggesting that adverse terms‐of‐trade shocks may play a role in ending long‐term high growth episodes.     

Trade openness and economic growth: Bayesian model averaging estimate of cross-country growth regressions

In this paper, we investigate the robustness of the relationship between trade openness and long-run economic growth over the sample period 1960–2000, utilising Bayesian model averaging techniques to account for model uncertainty issues in a systematic manner. We find no evidence that trade openness is directly and robustly correlated with economic growth in the long run. We further check the robustness of this finding by employing a battery of proxies for trade openness, namely, current openness, real openness, the fraction of open years based on the Sachs and Warner (1995) criteria and the weighted averages of tariff rates, non-tariff barriers and the black market premium. The main result is robust to the inclusion of different trade openness proxies and none of the proxies is robustly associated with economic growth. The data evidence also indicates that economic institutions and macroeconomic uncertainties such as those induced by high inflation and excess government consumption are key factors in explaining economic growth.     

CO2 emissions,economic growth,energy consumption,trade and urbanization in new EU member and candidate countries: A panel data analysis

This paper investigates the causal relationship between energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, economic growth, trade openness and urbanization for a panel of new EU member and candidate countries over the period 1992–2010. Panel unit root tests, panel cointegration methods and panel causality tests are used to investigate this relationship. The main results provide evidence supporting the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis. Hence, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between environment and income for the sampled countries. The results also indicate that there is a short-run unidirectional panel causality running from energy consumption, trade openness and urbanization to carbon emissions, from GDP to energy consumption, from GDP, energy consumption and urbanization to trade openness, from urbanization to GDP, and from urbanization to trade openness. As for the long-run causal relationship, the results indicate that estimated coefficients of lagged error correction term in the carbon dioxide emissions, energy consumption, GDP, and trade openness equations are statistically significant, implying that these four variables could play an important role in adjustment process as the system departs from the long-run equilibrium.     

Do Natural Resources Depress Income Per Capita?

Most evidence for the resource curse comes from cross‐country growth regressions suffers from bias originating from the high and ever‐evolving volatility in commodity prices. These issues are addressed by providing new cross‐country empirical evidence for the effect of resources in income per capita. Natural resource dependence (resource exports) has a significant negative effect on income per capita, especially in countries with bad rule of law or bad policies, but these results weaken substantially once we allow for endogeneity. However, the more exogenous measure of resource abundance (stock of natural capital) has a significant negative effect on income per capita even after controlling for geography, rule of law and de facto or de jure trade openness. Furthermore, this effect is more severe for countries that have little de jure trade openness. These results are robust to using alternative measures of institutional quality (expropriation and corruption instead of rule of law).     

Trade facilitation and country size

It is argued that compared with large countries, small countries rely more on trade and therefore are more likely to adopt liberal trading policies. The present paper extends this idea beyond the conventional trade openness measures by analyzing the relationship between country size and the number of documents required to export and import, a measure of trade facilitation. Three important results follow. First, trade facilitation does improve as country size becomes smaller; that is, small countries perform better than large countries in terms of trade facilitation. Second, the relationship between country size and trade facilitation is nonlinear, much stronger for the relatively small than the large countries. Third, contrary to what existing studies might suggest, the relationship between country size and trade facilitation does not appear to be driven by the fact that small countries trade more as a proportion of their gross domestic product than the large countries.     

Government consumption,government debt and economic growth

This paper compares the effects of government consumption and government debt on economic growth using data from 83 countries, including both developed and developing markets, over the period from 1960 to 2014. Linear regressions reveal that the negative effects of government consumption are relatively higher than the negative effects of government debt. A nonlinear investigation further suggests that the restrictions on government expenditure to prevent negative growth are more important for countries with lower trade openness, lower inflation, or greater financial depth, whereas the restrictions on government debt are shown to be more important for countries with higher trade openness, lower inflation or greater financial depth.     

Relationship between trade openness and economic growth in Latin America: A causality analysis with heterogeneous panel data

We empirically analyze the causality relationship between economic growth and international trade using new advancements in the econometric methodology for heterogeneous panel data applied to Latin American countries. First, we test for dependencies between the units of cross‐section (countries) and then we test for cointegration between growth and openness. Finally, we test for Granger causality using a heterogeneous panel data test. The results reject the hypothesis of general, unidirectional, and homogeneous relationship between trade openness and economic growth in Latin American countries as a group. However, considering heterogeneity, we found significant evidence of causality from trade liberalization to economic growth in Chile, Peru, Nicaragua, and Uruguay; we have found bidirectional causality in Mexico and Honduras; and a causal relationship from economic growth to trade liberalization in Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic.     

Nonlinearity between Trade Openness and Economic Development

This paper utilizes the instrumental variable threshold regressions approach to reassess the trade–development link. It finds evidence that trade openness contributes to uneven development. Greater trade openness tends to have beneficial effects on real development of high‐income countries. For low‐income ones, however, trade openness appears to influence real income in a significant and negative way. The data also reveal that greater trade openness has a positive effect on capital accumulation, productivity growth, and financial development in high‐income countries, but a negative impact in low‐income ones.     

Openness, Productivity and Growth: What Do We Really Know?

Comparative data for 93 countries are used to analyse the robustness of the relationship between openness and total factor productivity growth. Nine indexes of trade policy are used to investigate whether the evidence supports the view that total factor productivity growth is faster in more open economies. The results are robust to the use of openness indicator, estimation technique, time period and functional form, and suggest that more open countries experienced faster productivity growth. Although the use of instrumental variables help dealing with endogeneity, issues related to causality remain somewhat open, and require time series analyses to be adequately addressed     

Does a Regional Trade Agreement Lessen or Worsen Growth Volatility? An Empirical Investigation

This paper assesses how regional trade agreements (RTAs) impact on growth volatility for a sample of 170 countries over the period 1978–2012. Notwithstanding concerns that trade openness through RTAs might heighten exposure to shocks, RTAs through enhanced policy credibility, improved policy coordination and reduced risk of conflicts can also ease growth volatility. Empirical estimations suggest the benefits outweigh the costs as RTAs are consistently associated with lower growth volatility. In addition, smaller economies benefit more from the reduced growth volatility associated with RTAs than larger ones. The nature of the RTA also matters as shallow agreements such as partial‐scope preferential trade agreements do not appear to have a significant effect on growth volatility, whereas free trade areas and customs unions do. Finally, in investigating the drivers of RTAs, the regression results confirm that countries that are more prone to shocks are more likely to join an RTA, in particular with countries with relatively less volatile growth.     

Trade,finance or policies: What drives the cross-border spill-over of business cycles?

In this paper we investigate how income growth rates in one country are affected by growth rates in partner countries, testing for the importance of pairwise country links as well as characteristics of the receiving country (trade and financial openness, exchange rate regime, fiscal variables). We find that trade integration fosters the spill-over of business cycles, both bilaterally and as a country characteristic (trade openness). Results for financial integration are mixed; financial links as pairwise country characteristic are either insignificant or negatively signed (indicating a dampening of cross country spill-overs), but financial openness as characteristic of the receiving country amplifies spill-overs. We find no evidence for a role of the exchange rate regime. Finally, we find that higher government spending and debt reduces countries’ vulnerability to foreign business cycles, presumably through the effect of automatic stabilizers.     

Foreign determinants of local institutions: Spatial dependence and openness

There are both empirical and theoretical arguments for the thesis that foreign factors have an impact on domestic institutional quality. Yet the literature is divided over whether exposure (openness to the world economy) or the kind of institutions in surrounding countries (relative location) determines the quality of local institutions. This paper confronts these hypotheses empirically, addressing the issues of strong cross-sectional dependence and the endogeneity of openness. In a 107-country cross-section, both trade openness and relative location have a positive impact on local institutions. The institutional quality of neighbouring countries is not found to be statistically significant when considering openness to foreign direct investments instead of trade, but the statistical performance of that model is poorer.