Distance to Frontier and New Import Growth

In a panel‐data study involving product‐level import data for 48 developing countries that underwent substantial trade liberalization between 1989 and 2001, this study finds that the growth of trade in new goods imported following major trade liberalization is related to the state of technology that existed just before liberalization. The study develops two new measures of the extensive margin. Findings indicate that greater is the distance of a country from the world technology frontier, the faster is its growth of new goods imports. This indicates a higher cost of trade protection for countries further away from the world technology frontier.     

我国水产品进口贸易波动研究

随着我国人民生活水平及消费水平的提高,对水产品的需求不断增加。因此,本文首先对1995~2017年我国水产品进口贸易现状进行分析,并应用CMS模型对我国水产品进口贸易波动进行实证分析,探索水产品进口贸易增长成因,检验水产品进口与世界进口规模间的关系,据此为促进我国水产品进口贸易的可持续发展提出相关建议。研究结果表明：世界经济的发展及我国较强的进口引力是促进我国水产品进口贸易增长的关键因素,而进口产品结构及市场分布的不合理阻碍了我国水产品进口贸易的增长。因此,应协调世界经济发展,优化水产品进口贸易品种结构及市场结构,加强国际交流与协作,进而推进水产品进口贸易及国内产业的可持续发展。     

Assessing the Impact of State Trading Enterprises

State Trading Enterprises (STEs) are periodically subject to intense scrutiny for their suspected negative impact on the international trade of agricultural goods. Sound empirical assessment of the impact of STEs is scant, in spite of the ongoing and intense debate over their impacts, especially in the context of reform at the WTO. In this paper we use the case of world wheat trade between 2212 country pairs over a 35 year span to assess STE impacts. Using a gravity model, we estimate a Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood fixed effects model of world wheat trade to assess the role of both the presence of STEs and STEs with monopoly power. Further addressing estimation challenges, we also estimate zero-inflated versions of Poisson and Negative Binomial Regression models. We find consistent support for the hypothesis that monopoly export STEs are associated with higher exports for their host country. Similarly, import STEs appear to inhibit wheat imports, suggesting a protectionist function.     

The influence of international trade on labour productivity in services: The case of Brazil in the 1990s

In the developing world, services account for a rising share of domestic employment and international trade. Thus, it is important to know whether trade liberalization contributes to labour productivity in services. We explore this question, examining the 1990–2000 Brazilian trade liberalization. We find that growth of imports and exports strengthened labour productivity in services, but the contribution was smaller in subsectors with more college graduates, and this negative offset was larger in subsectors that received large foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. Improved access to imported manufactured intermediate inputs raised downstream services' labour productivity and downstream manufacturing firms benefitting from tariff cuts enacted by trade partners generated spillovers that improved the labour productivity of upstream service subsectors. However, FDI inflows and investments in human and physical capital modified these downstream factors. We conclude that the Brazilian trade liberalization strengthened productivity in services, but unequally across subsectors.     

扩大进口背景下中国进口对世界经济的影响——制造业就业的视角

伴随着中国经济的快速增长，中国在成为世界第一大出口国的同时也成为世界第二大进口国。以往对中国贸易的研究多是从供给端出发，然而从需求端来看，中国进口对世界经济的影响又有几何？本文在扩大进口战略背景下从全球制造业就业的视角对中国进口与世界经济的关系进行了实证分析，研究发现，通过对中国出口，相关国家的制造业就业实现正增长，但是两者关系会在不同贸易商品、经济发展程度和时间样本之间存在差异。在此基础上，本文进一步从就业创造和就业破坏等方面展开了机制分析。本文的研究表明，中国通过“世界市场”的角色在一定程度上降低了全球失业率，但同时也需警惕“进口竞争”对我国经济的影响。     

How much do tariffs matter? Evidence from the customs union of Belarus,Kazakhstan and Russia

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the early impact of the formation of the customs union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, and associated changes in import schedules on the structure of imports. Relying on an original data-set of statutory tariffs we find that trade creation effects were significant only in trade between Russia and third countries, but that there was some trade destruction, with a significant negative impact on imports from China to Kazakhstan and Russia, and on imports from the EU to Belarus. However, the magnitude of this effect is relatively small, suggesting that the benefits of the new tariff policy per se are limited at best.     

On the relationship between intermediate input imports and export quality in China

This paper studies the connection between intermediate input imports and firms’ export quality using firm‐level data from 2000 to 2007. Our regression results show that intermediate input imports promote manufacturing firms’ export quality through ‘variety effects’ and ‘innovation effects’, though the effects are significantly different among firms with different characteristics, and the magnitude of these effects differs across import sources and the quality of imported intermediate inputs themselves. Moreover, we find that a good institutional environment is conducive to the strengthening of the positive influence of intermediate input imports on export quality. Furthermore, the dynamic decomposition demonstrates that the reallocation effect is the key force through which imported inputs boost industrial aggregate quality growth. Taken together, these results suggest that product upgrading facilitated by quality embedded in imported intermediate inputs, a good institutional environment and market share reallocation help Chinese firms to improve the quality of their export products.     

Effects of Chinese Imports on Relative Wages: Microevidence from Chile*

The increasing prominence of China in world trade raises important questions about the impact of this on importer countries. In this paper, we address the issue of how import competition from China has affected relative wages in the Chilean manufacturing industry. Using plant‐level data for the period 1996–2005, we find that increasing imports from China have depressed relative wages in sectors with higher Chinese‐import penetration. Our results show a significant reduction of relative wages, between 4 and 25 percent, for those sectors that have experienced the largest increases in Chinese imports. We also find that this effect is particularly strong for small firms, while large firms are unaffected.     

Shaken,Not Stirred: The Impact of Disasters on International Trade

This paper examines the impact of major disasters on import and export flows using a gravity model (170 countries, 1962–2004). As a conservative estimate, an additional disaster reduces imports on average by 0.2% and exports by 0.1%. Despite the apparent persistence of bilateral trade volumes, we find that the driving forces determining the impact of disastrous events are the level of democracy and the geographical size of the affected country. The less democratic and the smaller a country the greater is its loss due to a catastrophe. In autocracies, exports and imports are significantly reduced. Had Togo been struck by a major disaster in 2000, it would have lost 6.2% of its imports and 3.7% of its exports. While democratic countries' exports suffer identical decreases, imports increase.     

The Impact of Chinese Exports on Global Import Prices*

This paper evaluates the evidence bearing on the question of whether China's buoyant export growth has led to significant changes in the import prices, and thus inflation performance, of its trading partners. This evidence suggests that the impact of Chinese exports on global import prices has been, while non‐ negligible, fairly modest. We identify a statistically significant effect of US imports from China on US import prices, but given the size of this effect and the relatively low share of imports in US GDP, the ultimate impact on US consumer prices has likely been quite small. Moreover, imports from China had little apparent effect on US producer prices. Finally, using a multi‐country database of trade transactions, we estimate that, since 1993, Chinese exports lowered annual import inflation in a large set of economies by 0.25 percentage point or less on average.     

Trade in variety and domestic production: Evidence from US manufacturing

Welfare gains from increasing product variety are an important source of the gains from international trade. Previous empirical studies, however, typically focus on measuring gains from imported varieties. This paper introduces a measure to analyze changes in domestically produced varieties to estimate the total variety gains. Our analysis suggests that, for US manufacturing, losses in domestic varieties from 1992 to 2006 seem substantial given the large decline in the number of US establishments. Yet, once we account for the reallocation of resources towards large multi‐variety firms, we find considerable domestic variety gains, adding to those from imported varieties.     

Aid for Trade and Global Growth

Aid for trade increases a recipient's public services, which lower its import and export transport costs. Formulating a two‐country endogenous growth model, we obtain two main results. First, a permanent increase in the donor's aid/gross domestic product (GDP) ratio raises the steady‐state growth rate as well as both countries' long‐run fractions and cost shares of imported varieties if and only if it lowers the product of transport costs. Second, under a plausible condition, there exists a unique interior growth‐maximizing aid/GDP ratio. These results are robust to alternative specifications for congestion and stock‐flow nature of public goods.     

The water footprints of Morocco and the Netherlands: Global water use as a result of domestic consumption of agricultural commodities

The volume of international trade in agricultural commodities is increasing faster than the global volume of production, which is an indicator of growing international dependencies in the area of food supply. Although less obvious, it also implies growing international dependencies in the field of water supply. By importing food, countries also import water in virtual form. The aim of the paper is to assess the water footprints of Morocco, a semi-arid/arid country, and the Netherlands, a humid country. The water footprint of a country is defined as the volume of water used for the production of the goods and services consumed by the inhabitants of the country. The internal water footprint is the volume of water used from domestic water resources; the external water footprint is the volume of water used in other countries to produce goods and services imported and consumed by the inhabitants of the country. The study shows that both Morocco and the Netherlands import more water in virtual form (in the form of water-intensive agricultural commodities) than they export, which makes them dependent on water resources elsewhere in the world. The water footprint calculations show that Morocco depends for 14% on water resources outside its own borders, while the Netherlands depend on foreign water resources for 95%. It is shown that international trade can result in global water saving when a water-intensive commodity is traded from an area where it is produced with high water productivity to an area with lower water productivity. If Morocco had to domestically produce the products that are now imported from the Netherlands, it would require 780 million m³/year. However, the imported products from the Netherlands were actually produced with only 140 million m³/year, which implies a global water saving of 640 million m³/year.     

Liberalization,growth and structural change: evidence from Nepalese manufacturing

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the consequences of liberalization on industrial structure in Nepal, a least developed country with weak institutions and severe infrastructure bottlenecks. Results suggest some structural change in manufacturing output and trade orientation which appears to be due to a change in incentive structure, but no significant improvements were recorded in total factor productivity growth which is of central importance for a least developed country like Nepal. Export intensity rose significantly in the postliberalization period despite poor productivity performance of export-oriented industries while import intensity fell due mainly to improved competitiveness in import competing industries and a fall in imports for smuggling to India.     

Firm productivity and importing: Evidence from Chinese manufacturing firms

This paper investigates various aspects of the relationship between firm productivity and importing for a large sample of Chinese firms between 2002 and 2006 making a distinction between the origin, variety, skill and technology content of imports. Employing a random effects probit model and a propensity score matching with difference‐in‐differences (PSM–DID) approach and treating imports as endogenous in our measure of total factor productivity (TFP) (De Loecker 2007), we test the self‐selection and learning‐by‐doing hypotheses. Our results show evidence of a bi‐directional causal relationship between importing and productivity. Although importing firms tend to be more productive before entering the import market, once they start importing firms experience significant productivity gains for up to two years following entry. We also find evidence of learning effects following the decision to import, which is stronger when import starters source their products from high‐income economies, import a wider variety of products and import products with a higher skill and technology content. A number of robustness checks confirm the learning effects of importing on TFP growth.     

Real Exchange Rate Volatility and Imports of Intermediate Inputs: A Microeconometric Analysis of Manufacturing Plants

This paper uses plant‐level data from the manufacturing sector of Chile for the period 1995–2007 to examine the effect of real exchange rate (RER) volatility on imports of intermediate inputs at the micro level. Using input–output tables, we construct sector‐level RERs relevant for input import decisions and find that increases in the RER and its volatility reduce the fraction of imported intermediate inputs used by plants, while plants' probability of importing is not affected. Thus, fluctuations in the RER affect the intensive margin of imports (the amount of inputs imported) but not the extensive margin (the decision to import).     

Developmental aspects of China��s trade pattern: The role of imported intermediate goods

This paper studies the relationship between China’s trade and its economic development. More than two centuries ago Adam Smith argued that it is the use of imported intermediate goods that constitutes the vector through which openness improves productivity. Imported intermediate goods can relieve what would otherwise be key constraints allowing faster growth, together with better human development. While China’s trade reform is often related to its productivity growth, there has been remarkably little attention to the relationship between imports and productivity growth at the industry-sectoral level. Our paper examines the sector-specific impact of intermediate goods utilizing a time series for the share of imported intermediate goods in each sector derived from our model calculations. Our study indicates that imported intermediate goods are playing an important role in the growth of Chinese productivity.     

Productive Capacity, Product Varieties, and the Elasticities Approach to the Trade Balance

Most macroeconomic models imply that faster income growth tends either to lower a country’s trade balance by raising its imports with little change to its exports or to reduce its terms of trade in order to maintain balanced trade. Krugman (1989 ) proposed a model in which countries grow by producing new varieties of goods. In his model, faster‐growing countries are able to export these new goods and maintain balanced trade without suffering any deterioration in their terms of trade. This paper analyzes the growth of US imports from different source countries and finds strong support for Krugman’s model.     

Measuring the Technological Structure of Chinese Imports

This paper uses the optimal partitioning method of clustering analysis using orderly samples to classify trade goods and analyzes the technological structure of Chinese imports. The results indicate that since 2000, medium–high technology products have made up the majority of China's imported goods, while the shares of medium or higher technology products have decreased and the share of medium–low technology products has increased sharply. The number of imported goods with a comparative advantage in the Chinese market decreased, while the overall comparative advantage of imported goods also declined. China imports different types of products from different countries and regions around the world. The findings suggest that China should increase the import scale of high technology products.     

不同贸易方式技术溢出效应的比较——基于我国1987-2008年数据的实证研究

本文运用协整理论检验了我国1987-2008年间加工贸易进口和一般贸易进口的技术溢出效应.实证结果表明,加工贸易进口和一般贸易进口的技术溢出均对我国生产率起到了显著的促进作用,并且加工贸易进口的正向技术溢出效果远大于一般贸易进口的正向技术溢出效果.同时,加工贸易进口和一般贸易进口的技术溢出效应虽然长期显著地促进了我国生产率的增长,但这种正向技术溢出效应在短期内呈现出一定的滞后性.由于加工贸易进口在租金溢出效应、竞争效应与人力资本流动效应上的优势使得加工贸易进口的技术溢出效应大于一般贸易进口的技术溢出效应.