Comparison of deep integration in the Melitz,Krugman and Armington models: The case of The Philippines in RCEP

We estimate the welfare effects of a modern mega-preferential trade agreement--the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership--with three versions of market structure: (i) perfect competition, Armington style; (ii) monopolistic competition based on Krugman (1980); and (iii) monopolistic competition in the style of Melitz (2003). We develop a new numerical model of foreign direct investment (FDI) with heterogeneous firms and extension of the Krugman model that allows small countries to impact the number of varieties. We hold both the trade and FDI responses constant across the three market structures. We find that in all three market structures, there are substantial gains from deep integration, but virtually no gains from preferential tariff reduction. Both our Krugman and Melitz style models produce significantly larger welfare gains than the Armington structure, especially if third countries benefit at least partially from the deep integration reforms via either spillovers or wider liberalization.     

Dual Labor Markets and Trade Reform in China

This paper specifically models rigidities in the labor market in China and analyzes the effect of labor market liberalization on economic growth using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. Our results indicate that labor market reforms are essential to the realization of significant gains from China's accession in November 2001 to the World Trade Organization (WTO). In the absence of labor market reform, the gains to accession to the WTO are estimated to be minimal.     

Input-trade liberalization and firm export decisions: Evidence from Argentina

Trade openness contributes to the diffusion of the modern technologies embodied in imported intermediate goods, which play a central role in the economic growth of developing countries. This paper investigates the micro-economic effects of input-trade liberalization. Previous work has found positive effects of access to foreign inputs on firm performance. If the availability of imported intermediate goods yields firm productivity gains, we would also expect a positive effect of input-trade liberalization on firm export decisions. This paper contributes to this literature by looking at the relationship between changes in input tariffs and within-firm changes in export status. Using detailed firm-level data from Argentina, I demonstrate that the probability of entering the export market is higher for firms producing in industries that have experienced greater input tariff reductions. These empirical findings are robust to alternative specifications that control for other trade-policy reforms, and industry and firm characteristics.     

Overall effects of financial liberalization: financial crisis versus economic growth

ABSTRACT

The contribution of this work consists firstly in decomposing the effect of financial liberalization into a global direct positive effect on growth and an indirect negative effect via financial fragility and crisis. We show that the aggregate positive effect of financial liberalization outweighs the negative partial or temporary effect. Secondly, contrary to previous works, we distinguish many types of financial reforms. We found that equity market liberalization is the most important component in reducing economical costs associated with financial crisis. Thus, equity market liberalization is the most important favoring growth. Interest rate liberalization enhances significantly the probability of crisis leading to a short-run indirect effect more important than other financial reforms. Thirdly, we improved our work by addressing model uncertainty using Bayesian Model Averaging techniques to choose appropriate indicators for model crisis specification.     

Impacts of Institutional Intervention on Price Transmissions: The Case of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange

In the aftermath of the market liberalization reforms, interventions in developing countries shifted toward building institutions. One of such interventions is the introduction of commodity exchanges. The theoretical justification is that commoditization reduces the high transaction costs associated with the information and enforcement problems characterizing agricultural markets of these countries. However it is not known whether these potential gains are transmitted to the various markets along a value chain. By taking the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) as a case, this paper examines the impacts of the introduction of the commodity exchange in transmitting price signals along the coffee value chain (world‐export‐auction‐producer prices). We found that both the speed and symmetry of transmission remains weak even after the launch of ECX. At each level, the market chain was found to favor buyers. This implies that not only the country's gains from export are sub‐optimal, the cumulative burden is on the millions of smallholder farmers who are located at the bottom of the chain. In a context where local agricultural markets remain traditional and export markets barely competitive, the introduction of the commodity exchange will have limited impacts in improving the performance of markets in transmitting price signals. Other policy measures to further liberalize both local and export markets are required.     

Growth-equity trade-offs in structural reforms

Do structural reforms that aim to boost potential output also change the distribution of income? We shed light on this question by looking at the broad patterns in the cross-country data covering advanced, emerging-market, and low-income countries. Our main finding is that there is indeed evidence of a growth-equity trade-off for some important reforms. Financial and capital account liberalization seem to increase both growth and inequality, as do some measures of liberalization of current account transactions. Reforms aimed at strengthening the impartiality of and adherence to the legal system seem to entail no growth-equity trade-off—such reforms are good for growth and do not worsen inequality. The results for our index of network reforms as well as our measure of the decentralization of collective labor bargaining are the weakest and least robust, potentially due to data limitations. We also ask: If some structural reforms worsen inequality, to what degree does this offset the growth gains from the reforms themselves? While higher inequality does dampen the growth benefits, the net effect on growth remains positive for most reform indicators.     

A Welfare Analysis of Capital Account Liberalization*

We develop a model of a small open economy with credit market frictions to analyze the consequences of capital account liberalization. We show that financial opening facilitates the inflows of cheap foreign funds and improves production efficiency. However, capital account liberalization has important distributional consequences. Specifically, it may be impossible to use public transfers to fully compensate the loss of those who are negatively affected by capital account liberalization. This explains why financial opening often meets fierce opposition even though it leads to efficiency gains for the economy as a whole. From a practical perspective, capital controls should be lifted gradually for a smooth transition.     

Transition Problems in Policy Reform: Agricultural Trade Liberalization in India

What will be the domestic growth and distributional effects of agricultural trade liberalization in India? How fast should Indian agriculture be liberalized and what policies should characterize the transition? This paper uses Indian agriculture to analyze medium‐term transition problems that arise in many major economic reforms. Employing a dynamic applied general‐equilibrium model, the paper focuses on the implications for policy design of the absence of efficient capital and labor markets and on the distributional consequences of economic reform in the presence of realistic limits on available intervention instruments. The key finding is that trade adjustment should be supplemented by policies that raise land productivity and, because this takes time, the adjustment should be gradual.     

Tariff pass-through and the distributional effects of trade liberalization

This paper estimates the distribution of welfare gains due to the trade reforms in India by simultaneously considering the effect on prices of tradable goods and wages. The cost of consumption for each household is affected by the domestic price changes, while wage incomes adjust to these price changes in equilibrium. Three rounds of the Indian Employment and Consumption Surveys are used for the analysis. The price transmission mechanisms are estimated for both rural and urban areas to understand the extent to which the trade reforms are able to affect the domestic prices. In order to assess the distributional effects, a series of nonparametric local linear regressions are estimated. The findings show that households at all per capita expenditure levels had experienced gains as a result of the trade liberalization, while the average effect was generally pro-poor and varied significantly across the per capita expenditure spectrum.     

Trade and product market policies in upstream sectors and productivity in downstream sectors: Firm-level evidence from China

This paper explores the heterogeneous productivity impact of trade, product market and financial market policies over the last decade in China. The paper makes a critical distinction between downstream and upstream industries, focusing on the indirect effects of regulation in upstream industries on firm performance in downstream manufacturing industries. We identify the differential effect of these policies on firm productivity growth depending on how far incumbents are relative to the technological frontier. Trade and product market reforms are found to deliver stronger gains for firms that are closer to the industry-level technological frontier, while the reverse holds for financial market reforms. The key conclusion that can be derived from the empirical analysis is that further product, trade and financial market reforms would bring substantial gains in China and could therefore speed up the convergence process. Taken at face value, the empirical estimates would imply that aligning product, trade and financial market regulation to the average level observed in OECD countries would bring aggregate manufacturing productivity gains of respectively 9%, 3% and 6.5% after 5 years.     

Regulation, market structure and service trade liberalization

In this paper, we develop a theoretical method to quantify the importance of regulation and market structure on the success of service trade liberalization. For this purpose, we incorporate a single imperfectly competitive service sector that can take on various market structures into a standard computational general equilibrium model. We apply our framework to analyze the impact of partial telecom liberalization in Tunisia. We show that if the regulatory environment guarantees competition, Tunisia's welfare can improve up to 0.65%. If a cartel is formed between the domestic incumbent and foreign entrant, however, Tunisia's welfare can drop up to 0.25%. Our results thus call for Tunisia among other developing countries to step up its pro-competitive regulatory reforms while liberalizing its telecom sector.     

Rice market integration in the Mekong River Delta1

In the last decades Vietnam has become a major supplier in the world's rice market. This position is the result of the policy reforms that have been implemented in the agricultural sector. This paper assesses the impact of the liberalization policies and focuses on the spatial price differences in the domestic rice market. The results show that price patterns correlate strongly in the Mekong River Delta. Even prices in other regions are integrated with price patterns in the South. Interestingly, private traders in the Mekong Delta are only indirectly responsible for the latter result. They satisfy local demand and deal with state‐owned enterprises (SOEs). In the framework of the national food security policy, the state‐owned food companies ‘subsidize’ transactions between the South and the North. Moreover, the state‐owned food companies still dominate export transactions. The latter issues constitute two major queries for policy makers involved in the liberalization of the rice market, as further policy measures should not jeopardize the interests of domestic rice consumers.     

CORRUPTION AND POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC REFORMS: A STRUCTURAL BREAKS APPROACH

In this paper we look at the impact of broad policy reforms on the levels of corruption. We use a structural break approach to identify country-specific time periods in which significant shifts in corruption levels take place. We then correlate these times of change with a set of covariates with specific focus on the impact of democratization, and trade and equity market liberalization. We find robust support for the hypothesis that episodes of reduction in corruption levels tend to be correlated with democratization and equity market liberalization.     

WELFARE GAINS FROM FINANCIAL LIBERALIZATION*

Financial liberalization has been a controversial issue, as empirical evidence for growth enhancing effects is mixed. Here, we find sizable welfare gains from liberalization (cost to repression), although the gain in economic growth is ambiguous. We take the view that financial liberalization is a government policy that alters the path of financial deepening, whereas financial deepening is endogenously chosen by agents given a policy and occurs in transition toward a distant steady state. This history‐dependent view necessitates the use of simulation analysis based on a growth model. Our application is a specific episode: Thailand from 1976 to 1996.     

ARDL panel estimation of stock market indices and macroeconomic environment of CEE and SEE countries in the last decade of transition

We tested the hypothesis of the procyclicality of stock exchanges regarding the economic activity of CEE and SEE countries, to measure the level of financial integration during the last decade of the transition period, and to compare these two groups of emerging countries. Our ARDL panel estimates support the hypothesis of procyclicality in the transition period in the CEE and SEE regions, and further financial integration, due to the opening up of the market economy and repricing of systematic risk, followed by large capital inflows, trade liberalization and industrial production, along with the implementation of institutional reforms regarding EU integration. In addition, the significant positive coefficient of capital inflows and negative coefficient of unemployment rate in the CEE and SEE panel ARDL results confirm the volatility of the transition process, as is obvious in higher industrial production, followed by the significant impact of import on CEE countries and the much higher significant impact of export on SEE countries.     

The dynamics of market structure and firm-level adjustment to India's pro-market economic liberalizing reforms, 1988–2006: A Time Varying Panel Smooth Transition Regression (TV-PSTR) approach

This paper for the first time employs the Time Varying Panel Smooth Transition Regression (TV-PSTR) approach to model the dynamic adjustments of firms and the evolution of industrial structure in the bigger setting of decades against the backdrop of India's dramatic liberalizing reform starting from 1991. Using Indian manufacturing firm data, it finds that the transition of market structure and productivity after liberalization did follow a smooth transition process. Instead of the previously assumed instantaneous ‘big-bang’ shift just after reforms, it actually took years for the Indian manufacturing industries start to react to the reforms, and the transitional impact of reforms took approximately four to eight years to complete. There is strong evidence of increased competition after the transition, with shrinked returns to scale (RTS) in most industries except for leather and chemical industries. The results on total factor productivity (TFP) are mixed: most import-competing industries, which suffer most from the shrinking of market size experienced no change or decreasing TFP growth; whereas the export-oriented industry, as the industry which benefits most from economy of scale, enjoyed a huge TFP growth following the reforms.     

Market-related reforms and increased energy efficiency in transition countries: empirical evidence

Energy efficiency improvement is a desirable response to growing climate change and security of energy supply concerns. This article studies the impacts of a varied set of macro-level market-oriented reforms as well as structural change on economy-wide measure of energy efficiency across a group of the transition countries. These countries experienced a rapid marketization process, which, since the early 1990s, transformed their economies from central planning towards market-driven models. We use a bias-corrected fixed-effect analysis technique to estimate this effect for the period 1990 to 2010. The results suggest that reforms aimed at market liberalization, financial sector and most infrastructure industries drove energy efficiency improvements. We find significant differences in improvements in energy efficiency between transitional Central European and Baltic States, South East Europe ones and the Commonwealth of Independent States. The reasons for these differences are also discussed.     

Liberalization,quality and welfare: removing the Italian VER on Japanese car exports

The empirical evidence that evaluates ex-post the effects of trade policy confirms the presumption, well known in theory, that quantitative barriers to trade have an impact on the average quality of exports. Yet, in evaluating ex-ante the effects of trade policy reform, very few studies take into account the role of the induced change in quality. The paper evaluates the effects of liberalization in the Italian car market through a calibrated model where the choice of the quality of exports is made endogenous. Simulating the removal of the VER on Japanese exports, there are substantial gains from liberalization when only quantity effects are considered. Results change dramatically if quality effects are taken into account: the downgrading in Japanese exports entails a strong reduction in consumers' gains.     

Refinancing and decentralization: Evidence from China

Decentralization can complement market liberalization by strengthening incentives of agents to respond to market signals. However, in China banks centralized lending authority following financial reforms in the mid-1990s. We present a new theory of financial decentralization in which centralization provides a credible commitment not to refinance bad projects by reducing available information. Using data from Chinese rural financial institutions, we empirically assess the determinants of decentralization and the likelihood of collateral seizure, strongly confirming the predictions of the refinancing model. We conclude that weak institutional environments may limit the efficiency of financial intermediation despite financial market liberalization.     

Has liberalization affected profit margins in Indian Industry?

In this article, we analyse the determinants of firm‐level profit margins in Indian manufacturing. The model we estimate is rich in its dynamic characterization allowing as it does for lagged terms, trend movements, business cycle effects and a structural break in 1991. We hypothesize that the reforms undertaken by the government in 1991 constitute a structural break that influences a firm's independence to react to other firms as well as the extent of competition faced by these firms. Inserting this into the standard industrial organization model of profits, we obtain a dynamic market model. Estimating this model for 1980–98, we find that the 1991 reforms did have a significant impact on profit margins in Indian industry. The reforms have worked through their impact on a firm's behavioural variables – advertising, Research and Development (R&D), capital–output ratios and managerial remuneration – though the precise variables that were significant varied from sector to sector. We find that relatively inefficient firms make significantly lower profits than others both before and after the liberalization as expected.