Current Account Adjustment in the Eurozone: Lessons From a Flexible Price Model

This paper discusses the desired size of the internal devaluation in the Eurozone for a scenario of current account adjustment induced by shifts in relative demand. Based on Obstfeld and Rogoff, I develop a four‐region model of the world economy consisting of the Eurozone‐core, Eurozone‐periphery, United States and Asia. In contrast to most of the existing literature, this model structure enables studying the impact of global current account adjustment on the rebalancing process in the Eurozone. In addition, the model allows for movements of factors of production between tradable and non‐tradable sectors. The results point to the important impact of sectoral reallocation and increases in Asian demand on the size of the internal devaluation as well as on the implied length of the adjustment period.     

Outsourcing and the US Labour Market

There is worldwide concern about the vulnerability of the current labour force to displacement by future imported services. In the USA, some have suggested that as much as one‐third of the workforce might be vulnerable to such outsourcing. However, the labour market impacts of this displacement are difficult to assess using purely analytical or statistical approaches. In this paper, simulation methods are used to understand how sensitive the US economy and labour market are to increases in services imports. Specifically, the scenario examined assumes that the share of imported services in total employment increases from 0.8 per cent to 7.25 per cent over a time horizon in which workers are unable to change occupations. In response, it is found that all industries increase their use of imported services and their use of the composite input that is comprised of imported services and tradable labour. With the exception of legal workers, all workers in tradable occupations experience declines in their real wages. Demand for non‐tradable occupations labour rises in the industries that expand the most, while demand falls in shrinking industries. The non‐tradable occupations that are used intensively in the shrinking industries experience declines in real wages, while the real wages rise for workers in non‐tradable occupations used intensively in the expanding industries.     

Current account reversals and structural change in developing and industrialized countries

This paper examines the compositional changes that occur in economies experiencing current account reversals using sectoral-level data on output and employment growth around 55 reversal episodes. The experiences of developing and industrialized countries are compared, and the role of currency crises is also examined. Labor market adjustment following reversals in developing countries is shown to differ from that of industrialized economies. The possibility that this difference is related to labor market informality is briefly examined.     

Short‐term Consequences of Trade Reform for Industry Employment and Wages: Survey of Evidence from Colombia

Recent research has focused on the short‐ to medium‐term implications of trade reforms for the labour market outcomes and poverty in poor economies. This article summarises the evidence on the short‐term consequences of the Colombian trade reform initiated in 1985 for industry employment and industry wages. Although the reform reduced manufacturing tariffs on average by 40 percentage points from 1984 to 1994, tariff declines were not significantly associated with labour reallocation across sectors. The reform, however, was associated with bigger declines in relative industry wages in sectors that experienced bigger tariff cuts. This evidence is in line with the predictions of short‐ to medium‐run models of trade in which labour is not mobile across sectors. It is also consistent with the predictions of models where imperfectly competitive industries share rents with workers and trade reduces the firms’ profit margins and thus workers’ rents.     

Sources of sectoral fluctuations in business fixed investment

A model of macroeconomic complementarity is used to assess causes of comovement in investment spending across nine sectors of the U.S. economy. It is hypothesized that the irreversibility and uncertainty of investment spending imply a greater role for investment linkages and aggregate factors in investment fluctuations compared with estimates for employment and output. For the average sector, past investment growth across all sectors, changes in aggregate demand, and a common factor account for two-thirds of the variance of investment growth. After accounting for aggregate demand, sectoral shocks explain 70% of the average sector’s innovations to investment growth.     

Services Offshoring and its Impact on Productivity and Employment: Evidence from Germany, 1995–2006

Economists have recently recognised services offshoring as an important influence on domestic labour market outcomes. Services are of particular interest since their significance has grown in terms of both quantity and quality. Only one and a half decades ago, most services were considered non‐tradable, but the emergence and development of new information and communication technologies has made many services internationally tradable. The liberalisation of international trade in services trade has further accelerated the volume of services trade. Our econometric estimations focus on services offshoring by German manufacturing sectors. We use revised input–output data from 1995 to 2006. We first estimate the impact of services offshoring on labour productivity. We then measure the effects of services offshoring on labour demand. The results show that services offshoring increased sectoral labour productivity, but reduced German manufacturing employment. The overall results suggest that labour demand decreased over 1995–2006, because labour‐reducing productivity and substitution effects dominated labour‐augmenting scale effects from services offshoring.     

转型期资本投资、产业结构、市场化对中国就业效应的实证研究

本文通过对投资、技术进步、市场化程度、产业结构变动、实际工资等因素对我国就业量的影响进行的实证分析和检验结果显示,自20世纪90年代以来,资本投资增加、产业结构变动及实际工资上涨是拉动就业增加的主要因素,市场化程度提高则抑制了就业量的增加.但随着时间的推移,资本投资、产业结构变动对就业的贡献度逐渐下降,工资增长对就业的拉动作用逐渐增强,市场化对就业的抑制作用逐渐减弱.     

Simulating evolution of interindustry linkages in endogenous dynamic IO model with layers of techniques

In this article, we propose a new version of dynamic input–output model in which both technological progress and deployment are endogenous, and where sector‐specific outlays on R&D speed up the development of new technologies and the installation of capital stock. In this two‐technology model, the new and old technical processes within a sector exchange their relative weights in production. We use the model to obtain projections of the interindustry linkages of sectors in the Polish economy over the next 50 years. The results of this simulation suggest an ongoing change of the composition of the set of key sectors of the Polish economy. In general, one may expect to see an ongoing drop in the importance of agriculture‐ and heavy‐industry‐related sectors on the one hand, and a rise in the importance of services‐related ones on the other.     

On Current Account Imbalances

Over the years, low wage and price increases in Germany amounted to a currency devaluation in real terms against the other eurozone countries and led to a continuous improvement in the German economy’s price competitiveness relative to its fellow eurozone members.     

How Do the Trans‐Pacific Economies Affect the USA? An Industrial Sector Approach

This paper studies how the Trans‐Pacific region affects the US economy in terms of business cycle transmission. We use a large data set consisting of disaggregated sectoral industrial production indexes from selected countries in the region and employ a factor‐augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR) approach to analyse the transmission of shocks in different industries. We find that a positive output shock in the entire Trans‐Pacific region has positive effects on the majority of US manufacturing sectors. We also find that sectoral shocks in five sectors of the Trans‐Pacific region have a large impact on the overall US economy. Three of the five sectors displayed strong same‐sector responses relative to the overall response, suggesting that vertical production linkages might play a key role in the transmission of shocks. Our results highlight the importance of examining industrial sectors in studying the transmission of shocks in the Trans‐Pacific region.     

The Causes and Consequences of Sectoral Reallocation: Evidence from the Early 21st Century

A number of industries underwent large and permanent reductions in employment growth at the beginning of this decade. We investigate the sources of these permanent changes in employment growth and what the consequences were for the U.S. economy. In particular, we find that relative declines in demand rather than technological innovations were the key drivers of the elevated levels of job destruction and permanent layoffs in the affected industries. In addition, most workers that were displaced in downsizing industries relocated to other sectors. While this process of reallocation led to large increases in productivity (and a reduction in labor's share of aggregate income) in industries shedding workers, it also resulted in prolonged periods of unemployment for many displaced workers, along with sizable reductions in earnings that were consistent with substantial losses in their specific human capital. Putting these pieces together, we estimate the costs to those adversely affected by these events to have been 1/2 percent to 1 percent of aggregate income per year.     

Trade Liberalisation and the Wage Skill Premium in Korean Manufacturing Plants: Do Plants’ R&D and Investment Matter?

This paper examines the effects of output and input tariff reductions on within‐plant wage skill premium in Korean manufacturing plants. We find evidence that output tariff reduction interacts differently with plants’ R&D and investment behaviours, respectively, to affect wage skill premium. More specifically, output tariff reduction increases wage skill premium mostly in R&D‐performing plants while reducing it mostly in plants making positive facility investments. While there is weak evidence that input tariff reduction increases wage skill premium, no such interactive effects are found. One story behind our results is that, although both R&D and facility investments may respond to changes in profit opportunities due to output tariff reductions, R&D raises the relative demand for the skilled workers while facility investment, an activity of increasing production capacity, raises the relative demand for the unskilled workers.     

When Do Long‐term Imbalances Lead to Current Account Reversals?

We extend the literature on sharp reductions in current account deficits by taking into account not only short‐term determinants, but also the deviation of net foreign assets from their long‐run equilibrium level. First, we analyse the long‐term relationship between net foreign assets and a set of explanatory variables and construct a measure of imbalances. Next, we model current account reversals by incorporating this new measure and compare the predictive power of this model with the baseline specification that does not account for long‐term imbalances. Our new model has a superior performance in and out‐of‐sample, especially when we control for the sign of imbalances. We also find that low net foreign assets do not necessarily lead to sharp reductions in current account deficits; it is rather the situation when they are below their equilibrium level that triggers reversals. Finally, we document that our new measure of net foreign asset imbalances is important only for developing countries, whereas standard models perform well for industrial economies.     

EXPLAINING ASYMMETRY IN THE U.S. MERCHANDISE AND SERVICE ACCOUNT BALANCE: Does the Service Sector Hold the Key to the U.S. Current Account Woes?

The U.S. economy has experienced two noteworthy structural changes in recent years. Externally, there has been a growing deficit in the merchandise account along with a simultaneously rising service account surplus. And domestically, the GDP share of the service sectors has been growing at a faster rate relative to the goods sectors. The objective of this article is to test the proposition that much of the asymmetry in the relative performance of the merchandise and the service accounts can be explained (1) in terms of income and price elasticity differentials and (2) in terms of relative growth of the service sectors. Results from estimated import and export demand functions for merchandise and service trades and from sectoral analysis of the U.S. economy seem to support the above proposition. The main policy implications are that: (1) domestically, the United States should facilitate current sectoral transformation by eliminating market distortions and rigidities and (2) externally, it should expand on the initiatives taken during the Uruguay Round and drive the WTO toward a full liberalization of trade in services.     

Beyond Border Barriers: The Liberalisation of Services Trade in Tunisia and Egypt

Tunisia and Egypt have both recently undertaken significant steps toward trade reform. They have committed to a partnership agreement with the European Union. Both countries have also joined the WTO and are participating in Doha Round discussions on the liberalisation of non‐tariff barriers on both goods and services trade. These developments provide an interesting context within which to investigate not only the changes in welfare associated with reforms affecting the trade in goods, but also the impacts of services liberalisation. Using open‐economy computable general equilibrium models for both Tunisia and Egypt, this paper explores the reasons why structural differences in these two economies imply different opportunities and challenges with trade reform and services liberalisation. The gains from eliminating barriers at the border for goods trade are significantly greater for Tunisia than Egypt. Both countries, however, gain substantially from liberalisation of foreign direct investment in services. Furthermore, economic growth is more evenly distributed across sectors than with liberalisation of trade in goods alone. In addition to reporting on the impact of alternative policies on income, output, employment and trade, sector‐level effects are also considered.     

Trade liberalization and the evolution of skill earnings differentials in Brazil

Skilled labor earnings differentials decreased during the trade liberalization implemented in Brazil from 1988 to 1995. This paper investigates the role of trade liberalization in explaining these relative earnings movements. We perform several independent empirical exercises that check the traditional trade transmission mechanism, using disaggregated data on tariffs, prices, earnings, employment and skill intensity. We find that: i) employment shifted from skilled to unskilled intensive sectors, and each sector increased its relative share of skilled labor; ii) relative prices fell in skill-intensive sectors; iii) tariff changes across sectors were not related to skill intensities, but the pass-through from tariffs to prices was larger in skill-intensive sectors; iv) the decline in skilled earnings differentials mandated by the price variation predicted by trade was even larger than the observed one. The results are compatible with trade liberalization accounting for the observed relative earnings changes in Brazil. They also highlight the importance of considering the effects of differentiated pass-through from tariffs to prices.     

Jobs and Exposure to International Trade within the Service Sector in Sweden

To establish in which service industries there is international trade (or it may potentially exist), we calculate locational Ginis for different industries. The basic idea is that from this measure of regional concentration of different activities within a country we can identify industries where there appears to be regional trade, and hence also a potential for international trade. Based on our method, we find that: (i) the number of employed in tradable service appears to be at least as large as in the manufacturing sector, (ii) tradable service is much more skill intensive than manufacturing, and (iii) lately, the employment in tradable service has increased substantially. We argue that the last mentioned result is consistent with the substantial growth of skilled labour in Sweden since the mid‐1990s (Rybczynski effect) and factors leading to increased relative demand for skilled labour. Particularly, increased competition from and offshoring to low‐wage countries seem recently to have had a considerable impact on the creation of skilled jobs and the displacement of less skilled jobs in the tradable sector in Sweden. Furthermore, we apply a similar method as for industries to identify tradable occupations. Using our classification of tradable industries and tradable occupations in a Mincer type wage equation, we find that workers in such industries and occupations receive a wage premia of 12–13 per cent.     

Macroeconomic stability in a flexible labor market

This paper examines the relationship between labor market flexibility and macroeconomic stability from a post‐Keynesian perspective. Considering two aspects of labor market flexibility, employment flexibility and real wage flexibility, I adopt the flex–output model to discuss employment flexibility and extend it by incorporating real wage dynamics induced from a wage–price Phillips curve to discuss real wage flexibility. Simulation of the model suggests that employment flexibility possibly increases instability of an economy whereas real wage flexibility reduces it.     

Is FDI Integrating the World Economy?

FDI's spectacular growth, in diverse forms, during the past two decades represented an important force generating greater economic integration. FDI increased substantially in relation to global productive capacity, cross border mergers and acquisitions component of FDI put domestic corporate laggards on notice, and the spread of FDI to non‐tradable service sectors generated the possibility that these traditionally low productivity sectors would be brought closer to the standards of international efficiency. Yet, FDI did not perform an integrating role in a more fundamental sense. There is little evidence that FDI served to speed up income convergence across countries. This was the case for two reasons. First, FDI flows remained highly concentrated. Second, the benefits from FDI appear to have accrued principally where conditions were already conducive to investment and growth. Hence, though cross‐country disciplines through bilateral, regional and multilateral efforts are important in reducing the distortions that lead to misallocation of capital, domestic efforts to raise absorptive capacity will ultimately be critical. Efforts to increase labour mobility, as foreseen, for example, under GATS, could have a significant effect in raising the benefits from FDI as the more mobile labour serves to bridge the cultural, institutional and contractual differences across nations.     

政府消费性支出的总量乘数和结构乘数

2008年金融危机后,大规模财政支出成为各国刺激经济的主要措施之一。然而,在这些支出中,各国政府消费的产品差异明显。有鉴于此,本文构建了一个包含制造业和服务业两部门的新凯恩斯模型,并通过计算总量支出乘数和结构支出乘数来研究政府消费不同产品对总产出和两部门产出的影响。研究发现,需求引致、要素流动、政府总支出的挤出和财富效应是政府消费发生作用的四种机制;政府增加制造业消费,会通过财富效应等机制挤出政府总支出,使总产出增加和制造业产出增加,但会使服务业产出下降;政府增加服务业消费时,会使服务业产出上升,但将显著挤出政府总支出,使总产出和制造业产出下降。