为什么交易服务中间商存在? 内生分工的一般均衡分析

本文考虑个人既是生产者(包括中间商)又是消费者的情况,同时基于分工获益与交易费用之间的冲突,运用超边际及一般均衡方法,探索了交易服务中间商出现和存在的理由。本文证明,交易服务中间商是专业化和分工水平提高的产物,而这种专业化和分工水平的提高则来自于制度效率和交易服务的交易效率所共同决定的产品总贸易效率的充分改进;交易服务中间商的出现还受到生产和交易的学习成本的影响,也会随着交易服务的生产技术的提高而加速;总贸易效率的提高同时也导致了交易服务中间商协调的委托贸易模式取代自给自足和非专业化生产者-消费者之间的直接贸易模式,并使得市场种类数增加、经济依存度提高、交易迂回度提高和人均真实收入增加。本文对于理解运输和物流服务的外包与内部化、生产与交易的交互作用以及营销渠道的形成具有意义。     

弱势制造商营销渠道联盟构建——基于外贸型中小企业转型内销渠道建设的思考

外贸企业转型内销市场面临品牌弱势、营销人才缺乏、渠道模式建立困难等问题。处于弱势的外贸企业需选择合适的中间商,充分运用利益让渡提高中间商经济上的满意水平,为渠道伙伴提供优质的服务,与联盟伙伴建立良好的沟通机制实现信息共享,从而构建渠道战略联盟;通过实施区域市场深耕策略,提升在渠道联盟中的话语权,巩固渠道联盟的相互信任,提高联盟绩效,以建立稳定的区域营销网络。     

服务经济的微观分析-基于生产与交易的分工均衡

与目前有关服务经济的研究不同,本文用一个新兴古典的佣金中间商1模型来分析交易服务的经济性质.主要结果表明:在市场分工中,交易服务是一种能够对产品的交易产生正网络效应的特殊商品;由中间商数量所决定的服务网络规模会影响市场一体化程度;制度效率和服务交易效率的改进将提高人均真实收入,当制度效率比服务交易效率的改进程度更大,或当服务业的劳动生产率提高,从生产部门向交易部门的劳动力迁移将增加;而改进的制度效率也将扩大产品和服务的市场容量;因而,经济增长呈现为以服务业发展为导向的增长.本文对于服务业缘何已成为发达国家的主导产业给出了一个微观解释,也为中国通过服务业来推动经济增长提供了一个理论视角.     

Middle Men: The Visible Market‐Makers

This paper presents a framework in which middlemen emerge to intermediate between ex‐ante homogeneous buyers and sellers in the presence of search frictions. Middlemen announce prices, and hold an inventory to provide more sure services. Middlemen can mitigate trade imbalances with price competition. Using this framework I illustrate how the frictionless limit can emerge and how middlemen can implement the short‐side principle for the market price to be Walrasian. The recent progress in the literature on intermediation will also be discussed.     

MIDDLEMEN AND THE ADVERSE SELECTION PROBLEM

We demonstrate that the coexistence of an uncoordinated search market and a middleman market may alleviate adverse selection in the trade of goods of different quality. Inability to conduct trade penalizes sellers of low‐quality goods disproportionately, encouraging them to trade via middlemen. A semi‐separating equilibrium exists when a sufficient number of sellers of low‐quality goods choose the middleman market to allow high‐quality goods to be successfully traded in the search market. The result may explain why a search market can survive alongside a coordinated market, a phenomenon characteristic, for example, of markets for used cars, housing and labour.     

Unpleasant middlemen

The question of how certain types of market-intermediating middlemen can be held in low regard is addressed. A model in which pure rent-seeking middlemen emerge endogenously is provided. Individuals differ according to their persuasiveness and according to their productivity. Those who are highly persuasive but relatively unproductive are the people most likely to become middlemen. However, only productivity differentials are shown to be essential for the emergence of middlemen.     

MIDDLEMEN IN SEARCH EQUILIBRIUM*

This article shows how allowing for goods to be divisible at the point of consumption and incorporating productive heterogeneity lead to the emergence of middlemen in an equilibrium search environment. In the baseline model, middlemen are welfare reducing and their number increases as market frictions are reduced. When the model is extended to allow for time taken in production and increasing returns to scale in the market meeting technology, middlemen can be beneficial to society by speeding up the meeting process.     

Demonstrating group selection: A comment on Janet Landa’s ‘The bioeconomics of homogenous middleman groups as adaptive units’

Janet Landa provides an impressive historical tour of the development of her theory of homogeneous middlemen groups (HMGs), and how she arrived at the group selection approach. Despite her claim that the case studies she presents provide evidence for group selection in human societies, we argue that such a conclusion is premature. We suggest that an evolutionary explanation of HGMs will be strengthened by greater attention to the details of the selective process.     

International Provision of Trade Services, Trade, and Fragmentation

This paper examines the special role that trade liberalization in service industries can play in stimulating not only trade in services but also in goods. International trade in goods requires inputs from several services industries (trade services, such as transportation, insurance, and finance) in order to complete and facilitate international transactions. Restriction on the ability of national service providers to provide these services across borders and within foreign countries creates additional costs and barriers to international trade above those that would arise in otherwise comparable intranational exchange. As a result, trade liberalization in services can yield benefits, by facilitating trade in goods, that are larger than one might expect from analysis of the services trade alone. This paper explores this idea using simple theoretical models to specify the relationships between services trade and goods trade. The paper also notes the role of services trade in a model of international industrial fragmentation, where production processes can be separated across locations but at some cost in terms of additional service inputs. The incentives for such fragmentation can be larger across countries than within countries, owing to the greater differences in factor prices and technologies available. However, the service costs of international fragmentation can also be larger, especially if regulations and restrictions impede the international provision of services. As a result, trade liberalization in services can also stimulate fragmentation of production of both goods and services, thus increasing international trade and the gains from trade even further.     

Disintegration and Trade

The gravity model is used to assess the impact of disintegration on trade among the former constituent republics of three demised federations in central and eastern Europe: the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. The authors find evidence of a very strong home bias around the time of disintegration, with trade exceeding normal trade intensity 24‐fold (for Slovenia and Croatia) to 43‐fold (the former Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia). Disintegration was followed by a sharp fall in trade intensity, although the legacy of a common past remains strong. By 1998, trade relations still exceeded the normal level 2‐fold in the case of Slovenia and Croatia, 7‐fold for the former Czechoslovakia, 13‐fold for the Baltics, and 30‐fold for Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Such trade intensities surpass the effects of formal preferential trade areas such as the EU or the impact of reunification on trade between East and West Germany.     

International Integration,Trade, and the Great Recession

In the wake of the Great Recession, almost all countries suffered a severe and synchronized trade collapse unlike any seen since the Great Depression. To the extent that economic integration fosters trade among countries, this paper examines the role that international integration played in moderating the negative shock caused by the Great Recession on trade. The methodology adopted is a modified gravity model in which we control for the Great Recession, different forms of integration, as well as the interaction between integration and the recession. Measuring integration in three different ways, the findings show that countries that were more integrated fared better in trade – the extent of trade collapse was milder – than less integrated countries. Specifically, Regional Trade Agreement, as a form of trade integration, had a positive and robust effect on trade during the Great Recession. This positive effect is also robust across regions and countries around the world. In a nutshell, countries that are into some form of trade agreements are better-positioned to absorb negative demand-side shocks caused by economic recessions than similar countries without such agreements.     

Mismeasurement of Distance Effects: The Role of Internal Location of Production

The estimated effects of distance in empirical international trade regressions are unrealistically high. Using state‐and‐sector level US exports data, this paper shows analytically and proves empirically that ignoring the internal location of production (of international exports), which leads to the overestimation of distance effects by about twofold, is a possible explanation. This overestimation is mostly attributed to the mismeasurement of the distance elasticity of trade costs when internal locations of production are ignored. A corrective distance index is proposed to avoid such mismeasurements and is shown to work well for the median sector. The results are robust to the consideration of alternative estimation methodologies and data sets.     

生产性服务业与下游企业的集聚研究:以广州市银行业为例

随着城市之间贸易的深入发展,现阶段中国城市化的一个重要特征就是生产性服务业向各城市群中心城市的集聚日益增长。本文以广州市四大国有商业银行为例,对生产性服务业与下游制造业的集聚进行了理论建模和实证分析。其结论认为:在理论上控制生产性服务业与下游制造业集聚的参数主要有中间服务与最终产品的运输成本和二者的边际产品以及中间服务的供应价格等;由于现阶段中国的生产性服务在城市之间的贸易程度尚较低,因此它们和制造业中的中间产品及最终产品生产企业既有集聚式分布又存在分散式布局模式,现代中国大都市的生产性服务业与下游企业的区位主要以集聚式布局为主要特征。     

县域出口贸易的空间相关性分析——以江苏省为例

出口贸易作为一种具有较强示范效应和溢出效应的经济活动,在相互临近的地理区位上应存在空间相关性。文章借助空间滞后模型(SLM)和空间误差模型(SEM),利用空间面板数据对江苏省县域出口贸易的空间相关性进行了计量分析。实证结果表明:(1)仅从一个相邻地区的县域出口分析,江苏县域出口贸易没有表现出空间相关性;(2)江苏县域的出口贸易整体上存在较强的空间相关性,周边地区的总体出口贸易对其有促进作用,面积较大或经济规模较大的县市的空间依赖性更加显著;(3)江苏县域对外贸易的区域差距相当程度上来源于空间距离,发达地区之间对外贸易的溢出效应和辐射效应会强化这种区域差距。     

Trade-induced productivity gains reduce incentives to impose strategic tariffs

Strategic tariffs, which raise an economy's welfare by restricting trade and improving the terms of trade, can create an obstacle to free trade. We evaluate how far trade-induced productivity gains (technology spillovers) reduce or remove this obstacle, because more intensive trade enhances these potential gains. Based on theory and the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) we estimate stronger import-induced than export-induced productivity gains. We feed the theory and the estimates into a global Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model calibrated to WIOD. We find that the USA's, China's and the EU's optimal tariffs are reduced by less than 20%, Russia's and India's by around 25% and Brazil's by 40% when taking endogenous trade-induced productivity gains into account. Nonetheless, incentives for single economies to impose strategic tariffs persist. Particularly large, trade-intensive downstream sectors producing distinct goods incentivize high sectoral optimal tariffs. A global free trade agreement could overcome such incentives and maximize the trade-induced productivity gains.     

国外贸易保护措施对中国制造业出口的影响——来自企业层面的微观证据

当前,以贸易保护主义为主要特征的"逆全球化"思潮涌现,国外的贸易保护措施对中国制造业的出口增长构成严重的威胁.那么,这些贸易保护措施对中国制造业的出口到底产生了怎样的影响?其内在机制是什么?文章采用2009?2011年GTA数据库与中国海关统计数据库的合并数据,从企业这一微观层面定量识别国外贸易保护措施对中国制造业出口的实际影响.研究发现:(1)国外贸易保护措施的实施显著地降低了受影响企业的出口规模,贸易保护措施的数量每增加1次,受影响企业的出口将下降17%左右;贸易保护强度每增加1个单位,受影响企业的出口将下降52%左右.(2)从影响机制看,国外贸易保护措施对制造业出口的抑制效应是通过降低出口的数量和质量来实现的.(3)贸易融资对制造业出口的边际影响最大,而贸易救济措施是对制造业出口整体影响最大的贸易保护措施.(4)国外贸易保护措施对外资企业、同质产品以及中间品出口的抑制作用更明显.文章的研究结论既为理解贸易保护主义的危害提供了经验证据,也为中国在持续推动对外开放背景下如何应对贸易保护壁垒提供了决策依据.     

全球失衡下中国参与全球经济治理研究：基于SWOT分析框架

目前全球经济失衡问题日益严重,主要发达经济体陷入经济困境,财政政策空间缩小,常规经济政策失效。各种经济保护主义政策,如贸易保护、汇率干预、资本流动管制等在世界范围内蔓延。全球经济治理的关键是重组全球产业分工和贸易金融体系,但是由于中国长期存在巨额贸易顺差和外汇储备,因此解决中国的双顺差现象被发达国家视为全球经济治理的核心议题之一,而中国参与全球经济治理的能力亟需提升。本文尝试运用SWOT战略分析框架,对中国参与全球经济治理展开实证分析,分析中国的比较优势、劣势、机遇、威胁以及核心竞争力,进而为中国参与全球经济治理提供决策依据和理论支持,实现国家利益和战略意图。     

How reasonable are assumptions used in theoretical models? Computational evidence on the likelihood of trade pattern changes

Abstract .  In theoretical literature it is common to make the assumption that in a multi-country, multi-good world, the direction of trade (import and export by commodity) is predetermined and fixed for each good for each country. We consider a simple three-country, three-good, pure-exchange model with CES preferences. We compute free trade competitive equilibria, three-country non-cooperative Nash equilibria, and customs union equilibria for randomised parameterizations, and find that trade pattern changes between free trade and customs union equilibria in around 35% of cases.     

Moving beyond the iceberg model: The role of trade relations in endogenizing transportation costs in computable general equilibrium models

Modeling trade and transportation costs is an essential part of multiregional or spatial computable general equilibrium models where interregional trade plays an important rolein shaping economic activity. The majority of such models use the iceberg trade cost approach where part of the produced output (representing the material costs of transportation) is assumed to melt away during transportation. There are a few models which employ a more refined approach with an explicit transportation sector providing transportation services which are then used to ship goods between locations. In this paper we show that this approach, although much more convenient than the iceberg approach, still lacks full usability due to the fact that markets, hence prices are defined at the regional level and as a result, transportation costs can not be endogenous at the trade relation level. Moreover, under regional level market clearing the iceberg and the more detailed approach are equivalent. We propose to refine the definition of market equilibrium and move it to the trade relation level. Using this approach we can gain full advantage of the explicit transport sector in the model with respect to trade cost evolution. We show through simulations that refining the way trade costs are modelled indeed gains new insights, and that moving the market definition to the trade relational level leads to qualitative changes in the effect of labor supply shocks on main model variables. The paper also presents a method to estimate a SAM by reallocating data from standard industries to a transportation sector which is then consistent with the model setup. This SAM can be used to calibrate the refined model with a detailed transportation sector.     

Trade costs and productivity in services sectors

This paper provides the first evidence linking lower international trade costs with higher productivity in services sectors. On average, lowering trade costs by 10% is associated with a gain in total factor productivity of around 0.5%, which is an effect of similar magnitude to that for goods sectors.