International trade and firm innovation: patterns and evidence from the Chinese Employer-Employee Survey data

ABSTRACT

How international trade fosters firm innovation is crucial in understanding how economic integration boosts productivity growth. This study uses the Chinese Employer-Employee Survey data set, which contains detailed, firm-level information on exports, imports, and innovation. The study documents several stylized facts characterizing the interaction between international trade and innovation among Chinese firms. The main findings are that exporters and importers are exceptional in production and innovation; exporters are more inclined to import material and machinery inputs; domestic and private firms do not seem to be more innovative than their counterparts.

Abbreviations: CEES: Chinese Employer-Employee Survey; FIE: Foreign investment enterprise; NBS: National Bureau of Statistics of China; SOE: State-owned enterprise     

Does financial development promote International trade?

Using China’s panel data of 30 provinces during 1990–2003, this paper attempts to explore a possible link between financial development and China’s foreign trade. Four indicators are used to identify the role of financial development, which capture both the scale and efficiency feature of China’s regional financial development. The effects of other variables are also investigated, including traditional factor endowments, foreign direct investment, infrastructure and institutional quality, etc. In general, the estimation results suggest that financial development has a quantitatively large and robust effect on China’s manufactured goods trade, among which the financial efficiency indicators play a more significant role in promoting manufactured goods trade than those scale indicators. Sensitivity estimations show that the effect of financial development on China’s total trade essentially differs from that on trade in manufactured goods.      

数字贸易政策国际比较、发展趋势及启示

随着信息通讯技术的发展,数字贸易作为一种新兴的国际贸易形式得以快速发展,在拓展国际贸易范围和边界的同时,也对全球贸易规则提出新的挑战。本文在分析全球数字贸易发展现状的基础上,重点梳理了美国、欧盟、日本等国家数字贸易政策发展脉络,以及数字贸易的未来发展趋势。然后,本文从中小企业的发展、平台企业的作用、数字贸易规则制定等方面提出对中国数字贸易发展的启示。本文认为,中国作为极具潜力的数字贸易大国,在数字经济发展的驱动下参与并推动建设国际数字贸易治理体系势在必行。     

International supply chains and trade agreements

There is a growing literature that examines the role of trade agreements on the formation of international supply chains. The evidence indicates that in general countries that share trade agreements are more likely to develope cross-border supply chains. In this analysis, we argue that in order to examine the effects of trade agreements on the formation of supply chains between two countries, it is not enough to analyse the impact of the trade agreements that the two countries share but it is also important to assess the impact of the trade agreements that they share with third countries. Using data on trade in value added for 129 countries, we show empirically that about 40% of the potential increase in trade in value added induced by a trade agreement between an importing country and a sourcing partner is wiped out by each additional trade agreement signed by the importing country with third nations in which the sourcing partner is not a member. The result has important implications for regions seeking to develop international supply chains but in which the process of integration is highly fragmented.     

汇率波动对国际贸易的影响综述

自布雷顿森林体系瓦解以来,在国际贸易领域关于汇率波动对进出口贸易影响这一问题的讨论始终没有停止。然而以往文献过多关注汇率水平的影响,忽视汇率波动的影响。为此,将汇率波动对进出口贸易的影响分理论层面和实证层面两个部分对文献进行梳理和总结,通过对已有文献的总结和评述,指出国内关于汇率波动对国际贸易影响研究中的不足以及今后的研究方向。     

International trade between consumer and conservationist countries

We consider trade between a ‘consumer’ country with an open access renewable resource and a ‘conservationist’ country that regulates resource harvesting to maximize domestic steady-state utility. In what we call the mild overuse case, the consumer country exports the resource good and suffers steady-state losses from trade, as suggested by the conventional wisdom that weak resource management standards confer a competitive advantage on domestic firms in the resource sector but cause welfare losses. Strikingly, however, when the resource stock is most in jeopardy, the conservationist country exports the resource good in steady state and both countries experience gains from trade.     

Youth labor market expectations and job matching in sub-Saharan Africa: evidence from school-to-work transition surveys

In this paper, we investigate the factors that influence youth labour market expectations and outcomes. We also perform a job matching exercise to understand youth labour market dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our results show that youth education is an influential factor of youth employment expectations and employment, ceteris paribus. Higher educational attainments have a great impact on expecting and securing better jobs, particularly in the technical and professional fields. Youth with low educational attainments, particularly primary education and lower, have a higher tendency to expect to be employed in occupations with low job complexity. Our results indicate a severe job-skill mismatch in all occupational categories, both before and after the youth’s transition into the labour market. Using education as the only selection criterion, we found that less than 10 per cent of employment expectations match with skills required while 55 per cent and 34 per cent are under or over-educated for the jobs expected, respectively. Over and under education is a notable feature in youth labour markets in Sub-Saharan Africa. About 47 per cent of employed youth in the sample are overqualified for their respective jobs while 28 per cent are under qualified.     

Human capital, market imperfections, and labor reallocation in transition

In this paper, we investigate the effects of human capital and factor market imperfections on household decisions regarding labor use and reallocation in transition countries. We develop a model that accounts explicitly for heterogeneity in the supply of labor and analyze its impact on the allocation of labor. Furthermore, the effects of imperfections in the capital and labor markets on the reallocation process are modeled. Using a dataset based on a countrywide representative survey of Hungarian rural households, we estimate the effects empirically and find them to be important. Journal of Comparative Economics 32 (4) (2004) 745–774.     

International treaties on trade and global pollution

The paper shows that global pollution need not rise under free trade in goods and/or emissions even in the complete absence of income effects. Differences in environmental concerns across the countries lead to differences in the pollution intensity of production and, thus, generate the possibility of increasing world output and income without increasing the world pollution by shifting the production of the polluting good from the country with higher pollution intensity of production to the country with lower one. We show that free trade in goods and/or emissions can induce precisely such a shifting of production with the country with greater environmental concern exporting the polluting good. The paper also demonstrates the possibility of a first-best international treaty on global pollution in which each country or group of countries is better-off.     

Endogenous trade policy in general equilibrium: An interaction of redistribution rule,trade openness,and labor market condition

Using a general equilibrium framework, the paper derives trade policy endogenously for a small country. It shows that, contrary to the existing literature, a lobbying industry is not guaranteed trade protection; it may even face trade taxes. Besides lobbying, trade policy depends on other factors such as the trade revenue distribution rule, income distribution across groups, trade openness, factor substitutability in production, industry employment size, and labor market flexibility. The paper also shows that the observed phenomenon of government preference for import tariffs over export subsidies—a long overdue puzzle—is an inherent outcome of lobbying equilibrium. It also shows that trade policies such as import tariffs and export taxes that have the same impact on economic market—Lerner symmetry (1936)—are driven by the same forces in the political market.     

The causes and consequences of sector‐level job flows in Poland*

We look at the determinants and consequences of job reallocation in the 22 2‐digit sectors of the manufacturing industry in Poland over the period 1995–99. We find that import competition and a competitive market structure (weak concentration) have a positive and significant effect on job reallocation. Moreover, higher job reallocation is associated with higher labour productivity growth in some specifications. This confirms implications from neo‐Schumpeterian growth models: one channel through which competition might positively affect growth is through the reallocation of scarce resources from declining firms to rising ones. JEL Classifications: F16, J24, J6, O3, P3.     

International production fragmentation,trade in intermediate goods and environment

This paper examines the implications of growing international production fragmentation-induced trade in intermediate goods on environmental quality. Specifically, by making use of a general equilibrium framework, this paper explores the link between trade in intermediate goods and pollution in a setting of endogenous environmental policy. The paper shows that international trade in intermediate goods, through an increase in the number of components available to the international producers, affects the level of pollution and environmental quality. Specifically, developed countries may reduce pollution at the cost of more pollution in developing countries.     

Effects of tariffs and real exchange rates on job reallocation: evidence from Latin America

Openness to international competition can lead to enhanced resource allocation in the end. While factor reallocation is essential if net benefits are to be derived from trade liberalization, the process generates costs both for transitioning workers and for employers undergoing personnel turnover. Net welfare gains depend on adjustment costs. Understanding of these issues has been hampered by data limitations. In this paper, we overcome some of these limitations by using new, harmonized measures on job creation and destruction for a number of countries in Latin America. We use these new series to investigate the impact of the removal of protectionism on net employment and gross job reallocation in Latin America. We find a robust pattern showing that reductions in tariffs and exchange rate appreciations increase the pace of job reallocation within sectors. We also find, however, some evidence of declining net employment growth as trade exposure increases. For example, we find some evidence that in the wake of tariff reductions, there is lower net employment growth.     

Informed trade,uninformed trade and stock price delay

The probability of informed trading (PIN), a measure of information-based trading risk, has been broadly applied to empirical studies on asset pricing. However, it is still controversial whether PIN measures exclusively the risk of firm-specific private information or it also captures the private interpretation of market wide public information. This article examines the relevance of PIN to the delayed response of stock prices to market-wide information. We find that PIN significantly explains individual stock price delay even controlling for size, liquidity and risk, and low-PIN stock prices adjust to market information more rapidly not only because of a notably high level of informed trading but also an even much higher level of uninformed trading. Our findings support the notion that PIN also captures the private skilled interpretation of public common factor information by sophisticated investors, and provide new empirical evidence on how information-based trading affects the speed at which stock prices adjust to information.     

Innovation and job creation in a dual labor market: evidence from Spain

This paper studies the effect of product and process innovations on job creation in the Spanish manufacturing sector over the period 1991–2005. We use a change in the employment protection legislation (EPL) in 1997 to study the effect of innovations on permanent and temporary workers before and after that change. We find that (i) product and process innovation created jobs, (ii) before the change in the EPL in 1997 innovations did not affect the number of permanent workers and all the increase in employment was explained by the increase in the number of temporary workers, (iii) after the change in the EPL, innovations increased both the number of temporary and permanent employees, and (iv) while the increase in temporary workers takes place after one year of the innovations, the increase in permanent workers occurs mainly two years after the innovations.     

Heterogeneous trade agreements,WTO membership and international trade: an analysis using matching econometrics

This article explores the heterogeneous effects of trade agreements (TAs) and World Trade Organization (WTO) membership on the volume of international trade. We extend Baier and Bergstrand’s (2009a) application of matching econometrics by distinguishing between different types of TAs and WTO participation and account for the endogenous nature of trade policy. For a panel data set covering 1960–2005 and 187 countries, we find that the treatment effect on international trade systematically varies with the type of TA and WTO membership.     

International trade and factor productivity as determinants of the real effective exchange rate

Using panel time-series models that deal with the problems of potential endogeneity and cross-sectional dependence, while also allowing for cross-country heterogeneity in the parameters of interest, we demonstrate that trade openness produces a depreciation of the real effective exchange rate.     

Price dispersion and the stability of trade*

Research on trade relationships has documented a high rate of relationship breakup and churning. We use data on Norwegian exports to document two stylized facts about the stability of trade relationships. First, the probability of relationship breakup increases in the deviation of the relationship-specific price from a reference price. Second, relationship hazards follow Zipf's law. We propose a search model with limited information and search frictions to explain these facts. Reference prices provide information on outside trade options that inform optimal breakups, leading to the first stylized fact. Strong heterogeneity in breakup frictions across relationships can explain the Zipf's law hazards.     

Country asymmetry,trade agreements,and transfers

Using a standard 2 × 2 trade agreement model, I show that the welfare effects of a free trade agreement (FTA) depend on the asymmetry on supply and demand functions. When countries are sufficiently asymmetric with respect to the size or the demand functions, the small country tends to be better off, while the large country is worse off. Thus, the small country must compensate the large country for the FTA to be incentive‐compatible. However, in the presence of sufficient asymmetry in the supply functions, the small country is worse off, while the bigger is better off. In this case, the transfer must flow from the large to the small country. This last finding helps explain why some FTAs between rich and poor countries provide for adjustment transfers to the latter.     

国际贸易专业“双导师制”模式创新与实践

校企“双导师制”模式不仅解决了学校理论教育与社会市场需求脱节的矛盾,弥补了教师只懂得理论知识的缺陷,同时也为学生提前开启了走向社会的大门,引导他们正确地认识社会、融入社会。安徽工程大学国际贸易本科专业通过“双导师”制的实践,在校内、校外导师的共同指导下,学生在毕业时就具备了比较扎实的理论知识和丰富的企业实践经验,为就业、再教育和服务社会发展打下了坚实的基础。