服务贸易、非对称开放与全球失衡:一项跨国的经验研究

文章从贸易内部结构出发，分析非对称开放条件下，服务贸易兴起与全球失衡之间的关系。并利用全球59个主要贸易国家2000-2014年双边贸易数据对两者之间的关系进行计量分析，实证结果显示：第一，服务贸易净值与经常账户余额之间存在显著的负向关系，服务贸易净值提高100万美元，经常账户余额减少98.7万美元。在引入交互项之后这种关系依然显著成立。因此，服务贸易的非对称开放是造成全球失衡的重要原因。第二，技术进步和利率上调可以扭转服务贸易对经常账户的抑制作用。第三，金融危机之后，服务贸易和经常账户的负向关系进一步强化。后危机时代，全球失衡现象有可能继续恶化。第四，分位数回归发现，在低点位处服务贸易净值对经常账户的影响更为强烈。文章的研究为理解中国的服务贸易逆差提供了新的视角，并为扭转服务贸易逆差奠定了理论基础。     

The Macroeconomic Effects of Large Exchange Rate Appreciations

Although currency adjustment is often proposed as a policy tool to reduce current account imbalances, there is no consensus regarding the macroeconomic effects. In this paper we study the macroeconomic aftermath of large exchange rate appreciations. Using a sample of 128 countries over the period 1960–2008, we identify 25 episodes of large nominal and real appreciations shocks. We use narrative identification of exogenous appreciation episodes and study the macroeconomic effects in a dummy-augmented panel autoregressive model. Our results indicate that exchange rate appreciations tend to have strong effects on current account balances. Within 3 years after the appreciation event, the current account balance on average deteriorates by three percentage points of GDP. This effect occurs through a reduction of savings without a meaningful reduction in investment. Real export growth slows down substantially, but the output costs are small and not statistically significant. All these effects appear somewhat more pronounced in developing countries.     

International Dependency and Economic Fluctuations in East Asian NIEs

Abstract

This paper investigates the sources of economic fluctuations in the four Asian newly industrialized economies (NIEs), namely Hong Kong, Republic of Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. As small open economies, their macro-economic development is highly dependent on technology as well as markets of large countries. Using the common trends model, we examine the impacts of external supply shock, internal supply shock and trade shock on the key national macro-economic variables of these four economies, i.e. output, consumption, investment, export and import. Our empirical evidence suggests that supply-side disturbances, both the country-specific supply shocks and international supply shocks explain the bulk of fluctuations in output.     

Rules for Correcting External Imbalances

Three aspects to adjustment are sufficiently distinct to be treated separately. The first is the balance of payments concept that is to be adjusted. The candidates are the overall balance of payments, the “basic balance”, and the current account balance. The latter is the preferred concept; specifically, all countries should aim to keep their current balances within a range of +/− 3% of GDP. The second are the instruments to be used to adjust a payments imbalance. The basic analyses are due to Hume and Meade, for the cases in which the country respectively does not and does use variations in the exchange rate as an instrument to facilitate the adjustment process. The third relates to the question of whether the international community should build some mechanism, besides the threat of reserve depletion, that will encourage its members to pursue adjustment. Most deficit countries already have an incentive to adjust. In contrast, the incentives for surplus countries to adjust are weak and need strengthening, perhaps by permitting trade retaliation for an undervalued exchange rate through the WTO or perhaps by taxation. The United States are the most difficult case because the construction of a suitable incentive for this country would probably be dependent on reform of the reserve supply mechanism.     

Monetary unions, external shocks and economic performance: A Latin American perspective

During the last few years there has been a renewed analysis in currency unions as a form of monetary arrangement. This new interest has been largely triggered by the Euro experience. Scholars and policy makers have asked about the optimal number of currencies in the world economy. They have analyzed whether different countries satisfy the traditional “optimal currency area” criteria. These include, among other: (a) the synchronization of the business cycle; (b) the degree of factor mobility; and (c) the extent of trade and financial integration. In this paper I analyze the desirability of a monetary union from a Latin American perspective. First, I review the existing literature on the subject. Second, I use a large data set to analyze the evidence on economic performance in currency union countries. I investigate these countries’ performance on four dimensions: (a) whether countries without a national currency have a lower occurrence of “sudden stop” episodes; (b) whether they have a lower occurrence of “current account reversal” episodes; (c) what is their ability to absorb international terms of trade shocks; and (d) what is their ability to absorb “sudden stops” and “current account reversals” shocks. I find that belonging to a currency union has not lower the probability of facing a sudden stop or a current account reversal. I also find that external shocks have been amplified in currency union countries. The degree of amplification is particularly large when compared to flexible exchange rate countries.     

国际收支失衡下的中国货币政策——基于结构型VAR的经验研究

本文采用结构型VAR模型,旨在揭示中国国际收支失衡下货币政策的反应及其对于宏观经济波动的影响。我们发现:(1)针对经常项目和资本项目盈余,央行分别采取扩张性和紧缩性政策;(2)紧缩性货币政策会增加经常项目盈余,但对资本流动的影响很小;(3)净出口和净资本流入的正向冲击分别导致CPI的下降和上升。除净出口冲击降低CPI并伴随扩张性货币政策外,其他发现都符合理论判断,说明了央行针对国际收支失衡实施的货币政策的合理性。     

Sources of time-varying trade balance and real exchange rate dynamics in East Asia

A sticky-price model with minimal assumptions for identification is used to motivate a time-varying model that allows for state dependent innovations to explore the trade balance dynamics of a group of East Asian economies. This paper shows that the correlation between the trade balance and the real exchange has historically been highly conditional on the type of macroeconomic shock. Permanent (transitory) shocks have historically produced a positive (negative) correlation between the trade balance and real exchange rate over the last 20 years. Second, since the Asian financial crisis the real exchange rate dynamics of the East Asian countries have been dominated by persistent component(s), while the dynamics of the trade balance have been more influenced by transitory factors.     

Demand Shocks and Trade Balance Dynamics

This paper studies the trade balance dynamics in the G-7 countries plus Spain. We estimate a SVAR model to identify three different shocks: real supply shocks, real demand disturbances and nominal shocks. A microfounded stochastic open-economy model is built to derive the long-term identification restrictions. Estimates show that real demand shocks explain most of the variability of trade imbalances, whereas, contrary to previous findings, nominal shocks play a very limited role. These results are consistent with the predictions of a widely set of open-economy models and illustrate that demand policies are the main responsible of trade imbalances.     

Macroeconomics of Agricultural Trade Liberalization

Abstract

In this article a macroeconomic model is built to examine interactions between the agricultural sector and the industrial sector in an emerging market economy. This article examines how monetary shock and real shocks produce agricultural price fluctuations and change in employment through multiple cross effects. Monetary shocks result in overshooting of primary commodity price while real shock in terms of rise in the production of primary commodity mitigates the volatility of primary price.     

The Effect of Exchange Rate on Bilateral Trade Balance: New Evidence from Malaysia and Thailand

This paper attempts to identify the major economic factors that influence the bilateral trade balances of Malaysia and Thailand with the US and Japan. To this end, an unrestricted VAR model was estimated using quarterly frequency data from 1980: I to 1996: IV. The Johansen results indicate a stable long-run relation between trade and three macro variables: exchange rate, domestic income and foreign income. The main findings of this paper are: (i) the real effective exchange rate is an important variable in the trade balance equation and devaluation improves the trade balances of both economies in the long-run; (ii) the other important variables that determine trade balance include domestic and foreign incomes; (iii) the results indicate no J-curve effect and causal run from exchange rate to trade balance, (iv) the real effects of devaluation are distributed over a period of eight to nine quarters.     

Symmetric and asymmetric persistence of labor market shocks

Within the insider-outsider paradigm, this paper examines persistence of shocks in the labor market. We distinguish “symmetric persistence” where the extent of persistence is independent of the initial direction of the shock, and “asymmetric persistence” where beneficial and adverse shocks of equal magnitude have effects of different size. The paper offers a theoretical rationale for how the symmetry or asymmetry may depend on the extent to which the shock was anticipated in wage setting and then develops a framework in which the possibility of asymmetric persistence can be tested empirically. Using annual UK data, we obtain empirical evidence of significant asymmetry in the response of employment (and wages) to shocks. Small beneficial shocks are reflected entirely in wage increases, although sufficiently large favorable shocks also elicit increases in employment. In contrast, adverse shocks lead to reductions in both wages and employment. Evidence from Japan and West Germany provides some evidence of the presence of asymmetry, although this is less marked than in the United Kingdom. The policy implications are discussed.     

New Estimates of the United States–China BilateralTrade Balances

The United States and China have vastly different official estimates of the bilateral trade imbalance. The U.S. figures show that the United States had a merchandise trade deficit of US$68.7 billion vis-à-vis China in 1999 whereas the Chinese figures show that China had a merchandise trade surplus of only US$22.4 billion vis-à-vis the United States. There is a difference of US$46.3 billion. Which set of figures is right? It turns out that neither side is completely right. Various factors, such as f.o.b.–c.i.f. adjustments and treatments of re-exports and re-export markups, complicate the measurement of the bilateral trade balance between the United States and China. One important conclusion that emerges is that while U.S. trade statistics may be more reliable than Chinese trade statistics, even they are not completely accurate. By explicitly taking into account the aforementioned factors, the discrepancy between the adjusted U.S. and Chinese data on the bilateral trade balance in 1999 is narrowed from US$46.3 billion to US$4.8 billion, or approximately 10% of the initial figure. Our best estimate for the true U.S.–China bilateral merchandise trade balance for 1999 is US$47.8 billion, in China's favor. If we take into account the trade in services, in which the United States has traditionally enjoyed a surplus, the U.S.–China bilateral trade balance may be estimated at approximately US$45 billion in 1999. Compared with the U.S. trade deficit with Japan (over US$70 billion in 1999), the U.S.–China trade deficit, appropriately adjusted, is still significantly smaller. J. Japan. Int. Econ., March 2001, 15(1), pp. 102–130. Department of Economics, University of California, Santa Cruz, California 95064; and Department of Economics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-6072. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: F10, F13.     

Sino-US trade balance from national income perspective and global income chains

ABSTRACT

Trade volume biases trade benefits under the background of economic globalization. Employing the input-output technique, important progress has been made in research on trade in value-added. It is noteworthy that capital globalization is one of the important manifestations of economic globalization. Owing to the ever-increasing transnational flow of capital, mainly by foreign direct investment (FDI), production of exports shows great dependence on foreign capital. A large part of value-added in exports are obtained by foreign factors owners, since foreign-invested enterprises account for a large proportion in host country’s total exports, which is foreign income. The ultimate goal of trade is to boost national income. We propose to study trade benefits and trade balance from national income perspective, and further introduce the concept of global income chains to reveal economic benefits distribution within international specialization.     

COMMODITY PRICE SHOCKS AND THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMY SINCE FEDERATION*

Australia has experienced frequent and large commodity export price shocks similar to commodity exporters in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, but this price volatility has had much more modest impact on economic performance. Why? This paper explores Australian terms of trade volatility since 1901. It identifies two major price shock episodes before the recent mining‐led boom and bust. It assesses their relative magnitude, their impact on de‐industrialisation and distribution during the booms, and the labour market and policy responses to the shocks. Australia has indeed responded differently to volatile commodity prices than have other commodity exporters.     

The dynamic linkages between current account deficit and budget balance deficit in the South Asian region

The issue of twin imbalances is at the forefront of fiscal policy concerns in the South Asian region, fuelled by an ever-going budget deficit and current account deficit over the last five decades. A standard approach is to assume a model in which budget balance influences the current account. We relax this assumption by using a panel data vector autoregression model comprising five South Asian countries. The results show that both budget deficit and current account deficit are mutually causative, which contrasts the unidirectional causality running from fiscal deficit to current account deficit found in prior studies. Further, this bi-causality relationship is also demonstrated in the impulse response analyses. Budget balance in South Asian economies responds positively to a one standard deviation positive shock in the current account balance. Likewise, external balance increases to a one standard deviation positive shock in internal balance. Higher fiscal debt impedes economic growth, which in turn impacts negatively on the budget balance. Our findings lead us to reject 'fiscal policy only' recommendations to address the twin deficits.     

S‐curve Dynamics of Trade in Africa*

Abstract: Two concepts summarize the short‐run relationship between the trade balance and the terms of trade or the real exchange rate, the old concept known as the J‐curve and a new concept that comes under the heading of the S‐curve. The S‐curve introduced in 1994 basically claims that while the cross‐correlation between past value of the trade balance and current value of the exchange rate is negative, the correlation is positive between the future value of trade balance and the current value of the exchange rate. In this paper we investigated the experiences of 20 African nations and found support for the S‐curve in eight of them.     

Determinants of Current Account Imbalances in 16 OECD Countries: An Out-Of-Sample Perspective

We employ panel data as well as country-specific models to uncover empirically the determinants of current account imbalances. We find evidence of slope heterogeneity likely rendering the fixed-effect estimator inconsistent. Mean group estimation is followed to overcome the latter difficulty. Both estimation techniques are evaluated by means of in- and out-of-sample criteria. The mean group estimator outperforms the fixed-effect approach and, moreover, only three economic variables are found to impact on the current account balance significantly. These are the government budget balance, the domestic output gap and the changes of the terms of trade. We finally propose a parsimonious dynamic model of the current account, including only these variables and illustrate that it has similar predictive accuracy as country-specific benchmark models. JEL no. F32, C23, C53     

Demographic changes, saving, and current account: An analysis based on a panel VAR model

This paper empirically investigates the macroeconomic effects of demographic changes, focusing on saving rates and current account balances. The econometric investigation based on the panel VAR model shows substantial demographic effects on national saving rates and current account balances in the major advanced (G-7) countries. An increase in the dependency rate significantly lowers saving rates, especially public saving rates. Further, a higher dependency rate significantly worsens current account balances.