Impact of trade liberalization on firm's labour demand by skill: The case of Tunisian manufacturing

This paper investigates the impact of the trade liberalization process in Tunisia on employment by distinguishing different skills and different types of firms using micro level data covering the period of 1983–1994. There is considerable disagreement among analysts on the impact of recent trade reforms upon labour. Our contribution to these debates in this paper is essentially an empirical issue. The analysis of a Tunisian firm's data may be viewed as an attempt to apprehend how employment in Tunisia, a developing country, adjusted to the trade reforms. Using micro-level detail on individual firms, we are able to trace the relationship between changes in trade policies and manufacturing employment at firm level and by skill. Although trade reforms are generally implemented at the sector level, their effects may vary significantly across firm characteristics such as output orientation. We measure the effects of trade policy on employment according to different types of firms. We also associate changes in employment directly with a measure of change in trade protection, rather than linking them to changes in imports and exports which would be more common. The results suggest that the impact of trade liberalization on labour demand depends on a firm's characteristics. In particular, the estimates obtained suggest that trade liberalization has beneficial effects on employment for exporting-firms. Conversely, trade liberalization has negative and disciplinary effects on employment for domestically oriented firms. The reduction in tariff levels conducted in this first phase of liberalization in Tunisia seems to have had effects with different intensity on unskilled labour and on skilled labour; this justifies the examination of these two skills.     

Climate Change Response: Evidence from the Margaret River Wine Region of Australia

This study explores the relevancy of climate change to business using a sample of wine firms operating in Margaret River, Western Australia, one of the premier wine regions of the world. Using a qualitative approach based on thematic analysis, the results challenge the extent to which climate change is a salient stakeholder, while demonstrating that the phenomenon may, in fact, be beneficial. Response actions towards climate change demonstrate both mitigative and adaptive actions, although differences in their level and rate of implementation appear to be attributable to a mix of normative and instrumental trade‐offs. Implications of the findings are discussed, with a particular focus on location theory and economic barriers as a key driver of trade‐offs between the choice of mitigative or adaptive response to climate change. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Energy balance climate models and general equilibrium optimal mitigation policies

In a general equilibrium model of the world economy, we develop a two-dimensional energy balance climate model featuring heat diffusion and anthropogenic forcing driven by global fossil fuel use across the sphere of the Earth. This introduces an endogenous location dependent temperature function, driving spatial characteristics, in terms of location dependent damages resulting from local temperature anomalies into the standard climate-economy framework. We solve the social planner's problem and characterize the competitive equilibrium for two polar cases differentiated by the degree of market integration. We define optimal taxes on fossil fuel use and how they may implement the planning solution. Our results suggest that if the implementation of international transfers across latitudes is not possible then optimal taxes are in general spatially non-homogeneous and may be lower at poorer latitudes. The degree of spatial differentiation of optimal taxes depends on heat transportation. By employing the properties of the spatial model, we show by numerical simulations how the impact of thermal transport across latitudes on welfare can be studied.     

Corporate governance practices that address climate change: an exploratory study

This exploratory study sought to investigate how well 98 firms in three industries, across 10 countries, are addressing climate change through five specific governance practices. The findings suggest that non‐US firms demonstrate higher performance on the governance dimensions than their US counterparts. Further, by separating firms into low versus high performers on the governance dimensions, some board structure variables, such as number of directors and an independent board chair, were associated with higher performing firms. The study contributes both to institutional and agency theory. For example, coercive isomorphisms in regions of the world, such as Europe, might be driving firms to demonstrate that they are addressing climate change at the governance level in order to gain legitimacy. As for agency theory, this study offers both confirmatory and contradictory results regarding board independence. For example, firms who separated the CEO–board chair role achieved better governance on climate change, while at the same time firms who demonstrated lack of independence with respect to the inside versus outside director ratio also achieved better governance on climate change. This paves the way for additional research in understanding how board structure influences organizational phenomena. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Analysing emission intensive firms as regulatory stakeholders: a role for adaptable business strategy

Climate change regulations pose significant challenges to firms that produce large volumes of carbon emissions. Accordingly, firms in the trade‐exposed emission intensive industries are critical regulatory stakeholders. Following the Australian Government's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in 2007, the proposed installation of an emission trading scheme is one of several business concerns as the government seeks to implement climate change policies and regulations. In this study, we inve stigate some of the major concerns that confront emission intensive businesses, and ask what the critical issues are for firms as a consequence of climate change policy implementation and what this means for their strategies. The study uses a concept mapping and analysis technique to reveal that future emission trading systems and business performance impacts resulting from emission reduction initiatives represent serious strategic concerns to stakeholder firms. Adaptable business strategies offer a potential solution to these perceived concerns and problems. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

A micro-level insight on trade-induced job polarization and poverty in Russia

The effect of trade liberalization on workers with different skill levels at distinct types of firms is often surmised to be heterogeneous. This paper employs a longitudinal individual-level dataset—the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS)—to study the impact of trade liberalization on the relative poverty of various groups of workers in Russia. More specifically, we use the country’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a quasi-natural experiment to analyze the impact of trade liberalization on workers at different skill levels and types of firms. Our analysis reveals significant trade-induced job polarization, meaning that, in the tradable sector, even though employment and wages are increasing for low-wage and the high-wage occupations, they are shrinking for mid-wage occupations, leading to a higher poverty rate for workers seeking employment in mid-wage occupations in that sector. Our results are robust to a battery of robustness checks, and they point to the crucial role of state-owned enterprises in attenuating the adverse effects of trade shocks on the welfare of workers.     

The effects of regional trade integration and renewable energy transition on environmental quality: Evidence from South Asian neighbors

Improving environmental quality across South Asia has become one of the utmost important policy agendas of the concerned governments. The susceptibility of the majority of the South Asian countries to multifaceted climate change adversities has motivated the need to identify the factors that can function to ensure environmental sustainability across South Asia. Although several studies have highlighted the importance of globalization and cleaner energy use in tackling the environmental degradaton issues of the South Asian countries, very little is known regarding the impacts of regional trade and renewable energy transition in this regard. Hence, this paper aims to scrutinize the effects of enhancing intra-regional trade integration and undergoing renewable energy transition on per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the context of six South Asian nations between 1990 and 2016. The results from the recently developed cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lag regression approach, accounting for cross-sectional dependency and slope heterogeneity issues, reveal that facilitating trade among the South Asian neighbors reduces carbon emissions in both the short and long run. Moreover, enhancing the share of renewable energy in the aggregate energy consumption figures is also found to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in both the short and long run. Furthermore, both regional trade integration and renewable energy transition are found to jointly reduce carbon dioxide emissions in South Asia. The results also authenticate the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis, while financial development and urbanization are found to boost carbon dioxide emissions only in the long run.     

Firm strategy and the Canadian Voluntary Climate Challenge and Registry (VCR)

The Canadian VCR is a climate change mitigation program that relies on firms' desire to signal environmental responsibility to external stakeholders through voluntary information disclosure. We analyze indicators of strategic behavior through three measures of engagement with the VCR program (annual participation behavior, quality of action plans and repeat participation), and test for differences in these measures among firms subjected to different regulatory climates that arise over time, across provinces and across economic sectors. Our findings suggest an increased perception of a regulatory threat in later years, as evidenced by an increase in participation rates, higher quality of action plans and higher rates of repeat participation. We also find higher levels of engagement with the VCR program in provinces with large petroleum (Alberta) and manufacturing (Ontario) industries and that have established provincial level greenhouse gas reporting mechanisms, and in certain sectors such as petroleum, electric utilities and to some extent services. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Trade Openness and Spatial Inequality in Emerging Countries

Abstract

Emerging world countries have experienced over the last two decades a significant change in their trade patterns. Bold trade reforms have been followed by rapid rises in international trade levels. However, despite these radical changes, we know remarkably little about how changes in trade patterns are affecting the evolution of regional inequality in the developing world. This paper addresses the link between trade openness and spatial inequality across 22 emerging countries over the period between 1990 and 2006. Our findings show that changes in international trade bring about a significant rise in within-country inequality across the developing world and that this impact is greatest in the poorest countries. This result is robust to the inclusion of a number of control variables, and to changes in the specification of the sample and in the measure used to quantify the level of regional disparities. Consequently, the increase in trade exposure across the emerging world, while possibly benefiting the countries involved in the process in aggregate terms, is generating winning and losing regions.     

The effects of free trade agreements on regional wages in China

We empirically study the effects of free trade agreements on regional wages in China using Redding and Venables’ (2004) extended model and manufacturing firm-level data in China from 2000 to 2007. We show that although free trade agreements can, in general, increase firms’ average wage level, they also contribute to increasing the wage gap in China. We also find that free trade agreements can have different effects on firms’ wages across China. In particular, they have stronger effects on average wage levels in land border regions than in coastal regions. Moreover, although firms in land border regions may be located closer to the partner countries of free trade agreements, they may still prefer to use shipping to transport goods. Our findings have important policy implications. In particular, we suggest that free trade agreements with China’s western neighbors should be accompanied by the development of appropriate land transportation networks. Moreover, income tax policy regimes should be differentiated across regions in China.     

REGIONAL INTEGRATION AND POVERTY: A REVIEW OF THE TRANSMISSION CHANNELS AND THE EVIDENCE

While there is an extensive literature on the impact of regional trading agreements on trade and capital flows, as well as on the relationship between international trade, growth, and poverty there is comparatively little treatment of the possible linkages between regional integration and poverty. We analyze the channels through which regional integration could impact on poverty, and then review the existing evidence on the impact of regional integration on poverty. We focus on two key characteristics that make any regional integration process different from unilateral and multilateral liberalization: first, the asymmetric nature of the liberalization process; second, the scope or ambition of the regional liberalization being undertaken and the nature of the institutional arrangements that are put into place to manage the process of regional integration. We also distinguish between short, medium, and long run effects on poverty of regional integration processes. There is some direct evidence explicitly linking regional integration and poverty, but in good part the shedding of the light depends on an indirect literature on trade, FDI, migration, and inequality.     

The origin of spatial interaction

This paper uses spatial empirical methods to detect and analyze trade patterns in a historical data set on Chinese rice prices. Our results suggest that spatial features were important for the expansion of interregional trade. Geography dictates, first, over what distances trade was possible in different regions, because the costs of ship transport were considerably below those for land transport. Spatial features also influence the direction in which a trading network is expanding. Moreover, our analysis captures the impact of new trade routes both within and outside the trading areas.     

Low‐Carbon Gentrification: When Climate Change Encounters Residential Displacement

This article focuses on the emergence of ‘low‐carbon’ gentrification as a distinct urban phenomenon, a process that we see as the outcome of efforts to change the social and spatial composition of urban districts under the pretext of responding to climate change and energy efficiency imperatives. The article develops a conceptual framework for scrutinizing low‐carbon gentrification, predicated upon insights from literatures on ecological gentrification and displacement. It documents the existence of an ‘eco‐social paradox’ associated with new patterns of socio‐spatial segregation and energy efficiency retrofits. We interrogate the discursive and policy frameworks, socio‐spatial implications and political contestations of low‐carbon gentrification. Evidence is drawn from case study research in an inner‐city district of the Polish city of Gdańsk, where such processes have been unfolding since 2006 due to the implementation of a targeted urban regeneration programme. This investigation is positioned within a wider analysis of secondary written sources about similar developments in other geographical contexts across Europe and North America, where anecdotal evidence suggests that low‐carbon gentrification may be widespread and common.     

股价崩盘风险、信息环境与企业现金调整

以我国2009—2016年沪深上市公司数据为样本，探究了股价崩盘风险、信息环境对企业现金调整的影响。研究发现：股价崩盘风险越大，企业现金调整速度越快，且这种正相关关系对于分析师跟踪数量较少、机构投资者持股比例少的企业而言更为显著。进一步考察股权性质在企业现金调整速度中的影响，发现国有企业与民营企业面对股价崩盘风险的现金调整速度并不具有显著差异，但是对于民营企业而言，更多的分析师跟踪和机构投资者持股将显著降低企业应对股价崩盘风险的现金调整速度，信息环境对于国有企业的作用并不显著。     

Why do some economies benefit more from climate finance than others? A case study on North-to-South financial flows

The Copenhagen and Paris Agreements, in which developed countries committed to mobilise USD 100 billion a year by 2020, indicate that climate finance will continue to grow. Even though economic development is not the aim of climate finance, climate-related disbursements will generate an economic impact on recipient countries’ economies. This impact will also reach other countries (including climate finance donors) through induced international trade. In this paper, we apply a structural decomposition analysis to study why the economic impact of climate finance varies between countries. We focus on specific climate actions and quantify the contribution of four drivers: value-added intensity, domestic multiplier, foreign multiplier and trade structure. The paper helps identifying the factors with the greatest potential to enhance the economic gains of climate finance in each country. This information can be useful for policy-makers trying to design national strategies that exploit the synergies between climate action and economic development.     

Wal-Mart and the geography of grocery retailing

This paper empirically examines the impact of entry by Wal-Mart on competition in the supermarket industry. Using a detailed panel dataset spanning 1994–2006, we estimate the impact of Wal-Mart on firm outcomes and market structure, controlling for persistent local trends and systematic differences across markets by exploiting the detailed spatial structure of our store-level census. We find that Wal-Mart’s impact is highly localized, affecting firms only within a tight, two-mile radius of its location. Within this radius, the bulk of the impact falls on declining firms and mostly on the intensive margin. Entry of new firms is essentially unaffected. Moreover, the stores most damaged by Wal-Mart’s entry are the outlets of larger chains. This suggests that Wal-Mart’s expansion into groceries is quite distinct from its earlier experience in the discount industry, where the primary casualties were small chains and sole proprietorships that were forced to exit the market. This contrast sheds light on the role density economies play in shaping both equilibrium market structure and economic geography. In the case of grocery competition, high travel costs and the perishable nature of groceries appear to impart horizontal differentiation between firms. This differentiation in demand appears to reduce impact of scale economies advantages that Wal-Mart exploited to the detriment of far-flung competitors in the discount store industry.     

Environmental policies,national culture,and stock price crash risk: Evidence from renewable energy firms

This study investigates the impact of country‐level environmental performance and national culture on the stock price crash risk of renewable energy firms. Employing a large sample of 626 renewable energy firms across 31 countries, we find a significant nonlinear relationship between country‐level environmental performance and crash risk. National culture dimensions are found to strongly predict the crash risk of renewable energy firms, particularly after the global financial crisis. On the contrary, national culture dimensions and environmental policies are observed to not exert any significance in explaining the crash risk of fossil fuel firms. Our results are robust with respect to alternative measures of stock price crash risk and the endogeneity of national culture dimensions. Overall, the findings of this paper contribute to the environmental economics literature by providing new evidence regarding the role of societal and environmental factors in explaining the stock price crash risk of energy firms.     

Heterogeneity in Professional Service Firms

Research on professional service firms emphasizes similarities in their organization and management and distinctiveness from other types of organization. In this paper we take a different tack and focus on the differences between professional service firms, that is, on heterogeneity across different professional sectors. We argue that differences between professions on a number of dimensions affect the nature of professionals' work and, in turn, the organization and management of firms across different professional sectors. Drawing on the sociology of professions literature we focus on three key dimensions of knowledge, jurisdictional control and client relationships to compare legal, auditing and engineering consulting firms. We consider how differences in these dimensions across the three professional services sectors impact upon the way firms are organized. We offer a number of propositions explicating how differences in the nature of knowledge, jurisdictional control and client relationships have implications for organizational form, team-working and pricing systems.     

Exploring the effectiveness of research and innovation policies among European Union countries

In this paper we explore the effectiveness of selected research and innovation policies among EU countries. Using data from the AEGIS database and information from the 2015 Bruegel’s Partnership report on research and innovation polices in EU countries, we compare and contrast the response of knowledge intensive firms to a sample of policies. We find that the impact of the policies in our sample varies not only across countries but also across the age of affected firms in those countries. We conclude our analysis with a call for policy makers to begin to investigate the incidence of the impact of their research and innovation policies as measured not only by the age of firms but also by other dimensions.     

国际贸易对气候变化的影响研究综述

随着世界贸易量的急剧增长,贸易自由化引起了一系列对气候变化问题的思考:贸易自由化是否导致温室气体排放的增加?贸易对气候变化影响的程度到底有多大?围绕这些问题,国内外学者进行了大量研究。文章在对国际贸易与气候变化关系的文献进行梳理后,侧重于分析贸易自由化对气候变化影响的研究,主要围绕三个方面对现有文献进行述评:对外贸易的环境效应、环境库茨涅茨曲线、国际贸易隐含碳。这些研究对我国减排目标和政策的制定都具有重要的启示。