Time Zone Effect and the Margins of Exports

The negative effect of time zone on trade flows has recently been established in the literature. However, thus far, no paper has explored the differing time zone effect on the intensive and extensive margin. Utilising product‐level trade data, this paper examines the impact of time zone differences on the intensive and extensive margin of exports. Furthermore, this paper examines the non‐linear impact of different levels of time zone differences on exports. Using the Poisson pseudo‐maximum likelihood estimation, the results indicate that the time zone differences negatively affect exports primarily via the extensive margin, with no effect on the intensive margin, which suggests that time zone differences act as a fixed cost of exporting. Furthermore, quartile analysis shows non‐linearities in the time zone measure, more specifically that time zones matter more at larger time zone differences. These results can have important policy implications for nations looking to increase their trade presence.     

Services Linkages and the Value Added Content of Trade

Working with a set of global social accounting matrices spanning intermittent years from 1992 to 2011, this paper examines the services embodied in trade on a value added basis. Data include not only the direct and indirect contribution of services to value added contained in a given country's exports, but also the extent to which third‐country value added in services, through intermediate linkages of imported goods and services, is also embodied in production and trade. Our data indicate, in line with previous findings, that the ratio of value added to gross trade has been decreasing both for goods and for services, which is consistent with growing vertical production fragmentation. On the other hand, while value added in goods sectors including indirect exports is less than the gross value of exports, in services, it is greater, highlighting the service intensity of trade.     

Migration and servicification: Do immigrant employees spur firm exports of services?

Services play an increasingly important role in production, employment and international trade but are subject to substantially higher trade costs relative to manufactured goods. Knowledge of how these trade costs can be mitigated is important for facilitating trade of services. In this paper, we analyse the role of immigrant employees as facilitators of firm exports of services, a role that remains largely unexamined. We bridge the gap in existing research by drawing on new data for nearly 30,000 Swedish firms during the period 1998–2007 within a heterogeneous firm framework. The results have important policy implications. As the multilateral approach to facilitating trade is challenged and more countries are imposing measures to restrict the cross‐country mobility of people, policymakers may need to find new ways to promote exports of services. Our results indicate that immigrant employees spur firms' export of services activities: hiring one additional foreign‐born worker can increase services exports by approximately 2.5 per cent, on average, with a stronger effect found for skilled and newly arrived immigrants. Therefore, policymakers could leverage the findings of this study to implement initiatives that utilise high‐skilled immigrants to promote services exports.     

Product Complexity,Quality of Institutions and the Protrade Effect of Immigrants

The paper assesses the trade‐creating impact of foreign‐born residents on the international imports and exports of the French regions where they are settled. The protrade effect of immigrants is investigated along two intertwined dimensions: the complexity of traded goods and the quality of institutions in partner countries. The trade‐enhancing impact of immigrants is, on average, more salient when they come from a country with weak institutions. However, this positive impact is especially large on the imports of simple products. When we turn to complex goods, for which the information channel conveyed by immigrants is the most valuable, immigration enhances imports regardless of the quality of institutions in the partner country. Regarding exports, immigrants substitute for weak institutions on both simple and complex goods.     

The effect of WTO on the extensive and the intensive margins of trade

We use 6-digit bilateral trade data to document the effect of WTO/GATT membership on the extensive and intensive product margins of trade. We construct gravity equations for the two product margins motivated by Chaney (2008). The empirical results show that standard gravity variables provide good explanatory power for bilateral trade on both margins. Importantly, we show that the impact of the WTO is concentrated almost exclusively on the extensive product margin of trade, i.e. trade in goods that were not previously traded. In our preferred specification, WTO membership increases the extensive margin of exports by 25%. At the same time, WTO membership has a negative impact on the intensive margin. Based on novel comparative statics results about how fixed and variable trade costs impact the product margins of trade, our results suggest that WTO membership works by reducing primarily the fixed rather than the variable costs of trade.     

The Extensive and Intensive Margins of Exports: The Role of Innovation

An important prediction of trade theories is that innovation can improve a country’s export performance. Using data on patents granted by the US as a proxy for innovation and data on manufacturing exports from 105 countries over the period 1975–2001, I investigate the extent to which innovation increases the number of products traded (the extensive margin) and the export value of each product (the intensive margin). The empirical results show that (i) innovation has a positive and significant effect on both the extensive and intensive margins. The intensive margin contributes 70 per cent of the effect, and the extensive margin accounts for 30 per cent. (ii) The effect of innovation on exports is stronger for low‐income countries than for high‐income countries. (iii) More innovative countries export greater quantities and charge higher prices, suggesting that innovation increases the product quality of exports.     

双向知识产权保护对中国出口三元边际的影响

理论分析了双向知识产权保护对出口国出口三元边际的影响,并选取2005—2015年中国出口到世界65个国家的HS-6位贸易数据,构建引力模型进行了实证验证。主要结论是,国内加强知识产权保护可以提升中国的出口种类和数量,贸易伙伴国加强知识产权保护可以提升中国的出口种类;没有证据表明,国内或国外知识产权保护水平的提升会影响中国的出口价格;当国内知识产权保护更强时,双向知识产权保护对中国出口种类的促进作用都有所增强,反之则二者作用都不显著;分国家类型的研究表明,双向知识产权保护的同时加强更有益于中国向发展中国家出口产品种类的扩张,但对发达国家则不显著。     

我国工业制成品出口贸易结构与竞争力实证分析

近年来,我国工业制成品出口贸易有了较快的发展,贸易结构也有了很大提升。通过多个竞争力指标的分析得出的结论是:我国出口产品在劳动密集型领域具有一定的国际竞争力;在资本技术密集型领域,出口产品的国际竞争力水平起步比较低,但近年来发展很快;出口价格总体上呈现出不断下降的趋势,贸易条件需要改善。     

贸易便利化对中国企业出口二元边际的影响

本文采用中国海关数据库和OECD编制的TFIs指数,从出口企业-目的地层面分析了出口目的地贸易便利化对中国企业出口二元边际的影响。研究显示:目的地贸易便利化的提升对中国企业出口额增长有显著的促进作用,但企业的出口增长是通过缩小出口产品种类数(扩展边际)、扩大产品平均出口额(集约边际)实现的。拓展分析表明:随着目的地贸易便利化水平的提升,小企业和加工贸易企业会更多地缩小出口产品种类;低收入经济体贸易便利化提升对中国企业出口扩展边际的消极影响更大。据此,企业应专业化、规模化地生产有比较优势的产品,不断提升自身生产率,积极应对贸易便利化带来的机遇和挑战。     

Export promotion activities in developing countries: What kind of trade do they promote?

Information problems involved in trading differentiated goods are a priori acuter than those associated with trading more homogeneous products. The impact of export promotion activities intending to address these problems can therefore be expected to differ across goods with different degree of differentiation. Empirical evidence on this respect is virtually inexistent. This article aims at filling this gap in the literature by providing estimates of the effect of these activities over firms trading different goods using highly disaggregated export data for the whole population of Costa Rican exporters over the period 2001–2006. We find that trade promotion actions favor an increase of exports along the extensive margin, in particular, in terms of destination countries, in the case of firms that are already selling differentiated goods. However, these actions do not seem to encourage exporter to start exporting these goods. Further, no significant impacts are observed for firms exporting reference-priced and homogeneous goods.     

The role of inbound tourist flows in promoting exports

While it is established that tourism benefits growth through increased employment and investments, it is not well understood whether tourism has an effect on exports. This paper explores exports as an additional channel through which tourism affects domestic economic activity. Using bilateral tourist and trade flows, the paper explores the causal effect of tourist flows on exports. To deal with endogeneity, two instruments are constructed and subsequently used on two different sets of exporters, one of the instruments being the number of casualties due to terrorism in a country. We find that tourism affects mainly the exports of differentiated products. Specifically, we find that tourism benefits the exports from non‐OECD exporters of processed food products and this effect is only estimated for South–North trade with an elasticity close to 1. For European countries, the findings point in the same direction; tourism affects differentiated consumer products and processed food with elasticity close to 1, which adds plausibility to the earlier results. We also find a lagged effect for tourism mainly on the export of consumer goods (for the two samples) and processed food products (for European countries). The results suggest that exporting is an additional channel through which tourism can stimulate domestic economic activity in the tourist destination.     

FDI对我国价格贸易条件影响的实证分析

本文利用1985～2006年的统计数据,建立了包含价格贸易条件、初级产品进口额、工业制成品出口额、贸易顺差和外资企业出口占我国出口总额的比重这5个变量的协整模型和误差修正模型,对外商直接投资对我国价格贸易条件的影响进行了实证分析,实证结果表明工业制成品出口是导致价格贸易条件恶化的重要原因,而初级产品进口对改善价格贸易条件有正效应,但正效应目前还不显著,FDI对改善我国的价格贸易条件有显著的正效应。在此基础上,本文提出了改善我国价格贸易条件的政策建议。     

The relationship between trade openness and economic growth: Some new insights on the openness measurement issue

Empirical results on the links between trade openness and economic growth often suggest that, in the long run, more outward‐oriented countries register better economic growth. However, a similar level of trade openness can hide different types of trade structures. The aim of this paper was to enrich the way of measuring trade openness taking into account two different dimensions of countries’ integration in world trade: export quality and export variety. Based on the estimation of an endogenous growth model on a panel of 169 countries between 1988 and 2014 using a generalised method of moments estimator, our results confirm that countries exporting higher quality products and new varieties grow more rapidly. More importantly, we find a non‐linear pattern between the export ratio and the quality of the export basket, suggesting that openness to trade may impact growth negatively for countries which are specialised in low‐quality products. A non‐linear relationship between export variety, the export ratio and growth is also found, suggesting that countries increasing their exports will grow more rapidly after reaching a certain degree of the extensive margin of exports.     

Isolating the Network Effect of Immigrants on Trade

Within the migration–trade nexus literature, this paper proposes a more carefully defined measure of migration business networks and quantifies its impact on bilateral trade. Using cross‐sectional data and controlling for the overall bilateral stock of migrants, the share of migrants employed in managerial/business‐related occupations has a strong additional effect on trade. Those immigrants should be the ones directly involved in the diffusion and transmission of information relevant for companies trading with other countries. Their presence is found to increase the volume of trade, especially of imports, beyond the already known effect of immigrants or highly educated immigrants. When we control for the presence of highly educated immigrants, the share of immigrants in business network occupations shows a particularly large effect on trade in differentiated goods. We also find that highly educated individuals in business‐related occupations are those contributing to stimulate import and export by the largest margin. Business network effects seem particularly important in stimulating exports to culturally different countries, such as those with different language and legal origin.     

经济规模、贸易成本与我国钢铁行业出口的二元边际分析

根据HS八分位将钢铁行业分为204类产品,并利用我国与168个国家(地区)的1 6748个出口数据将出口分解为广度边际(EM)、集约边际(IM)、价格因子(P)和数量因子(X),从二元边际的角度分析我国钢铁产品出口增长的途径,实证表明:集约边际对钢铁出口增长的作用大于广度边际,国家间出口的差异来源于数量因子,而价格因子的国家间差异较小;此外,经济规模、经济发展水平以及贸易成本对出口边际影响显著,但影响程度具有差异性。     

How Do Exporters React to Changes in Cost Competitiveness?

Various international institutions such as the European Commission, the ECB and the OECD often use unit labour costs as a measure of international competitiveness. The goal of this paper was to examine how well this measure is related to international export performance at the firm level. To this end, we use Belgian firm‐level data for the period 1999 to 2010 to analyse the impact of unit labour costs on exports. We find an estimated elasticity of the intensive margin of exports with respect to unit labour costs between −0.2 and −0.4. This elasticity varies between sectors and between firms, with more labour‐intensive firms having a higher elasticity. The microdata also enable us to analyse the impact of unit labour costs on the extensive margin. Our results show that higher unit labour costs reduce the probability of starting to export for non‐exporters and increase the probability of exporters stopping. While our results show that unit labour costs have an impact on the intensive margin and extensive margin of firm‐level exports, the effect is rather low, suggesting that pass‐through of costs into prices is limited. The latter is consistent with recent trade models emphasising that not only relative costs, but also demand factors such as quality and taste matter for explaining firm‐level exports.     

Public Export Credit Guarantees and Foreign Trade Structure: Evidence from Austria

Foreign trade is usually not based on cash transactions, but rather sales on credit are the rule. The resulting monitoring costs for lenders and the risk of default on accounts receivable are part of the costs associated with cross‐border goods transactions. Relative to domestic trade credit, cross‐border credit creates trade barriers due to differences in language, business practice, jurisdiction and payment enforceability between trading partners. Export credit insurance has long been a domain of public export credit agencies. Only since the early 1980s private insurance is gaining ground. Using disaggregated panel data for goods exports from Austria over the period 1996 to 2002, we show that public export credit guarantees have a less than proportional positive effect on international trade volume. They predominantly affect the country structure of foreign trade but leave the industry specialisation almost unchanged.     

Tradability, productivity, and international economic integration

This paper develops a model of endogenously tradable goods to study the implications of international integration for price dispersion and pricing to market. A distinctive feature of the model is heterogeneity in both trade costs and productivity. The model highlights the role of heterogeneity in shaping how new entrants at the extensive margin differ from incumbent traders, thereby giving extensive margin movements distinctive implications relative to the intensive margin. In particular, the model predicts that international integration mainly along the extensive margin should be associated with a more limited degree of price convergence. This prediction finds support in cross-sectional regressions on European data and offers insight into recent integration episodes.     

我国对“一带一路”沿线国家出口态势浅析

"一带一路"倡议的实施不仅改善了外部发展环境,更是成为新常态下外贸提质增效的战略支撑。笔者基于我国对"一带一路"沿线国家的出口数据分析,揭示三大态势:一是初级产品与工业制成品出口双增长,但制成品出口中沿线国家所占份额趋于稳定,而初级产品出口中沿线国家占比不断上升;二是工业制成品中劳动密集型产品出口下滑而高新技术产品出口增势明显;三是对东盟出口中间品与进口最终消费品保持较快增长。进一步分析表明,上述三大态势缘自"一带一路"背景下我国对外直接投资的发展、经济增长方式的转型以及东亚分工体系的调整。     

The Impact of Services Trade Restrictiveness on Trade Flows

This paper uses recent OECD data on services trade restrictions (STRI) to analyse the relationship between services trade policies and cross‐border trade in services. A standard gravity model is enhanced by the STRI indices in a cross‐section regression analysis. Services trade restrictions are negatively associated with both imports and exports of services. The surprisingly strong effect on services exports is probably explained by a negative relationship between the STRIs and sector performance indicators. Consequently, services suppliers from less open countries are less competitive abroad. Bilateral differences in regulation are also found to curtail services trade over and above the impact of the trade liberalisation level. At the margin, regulatory differences have a larger effect on trade flows the lower the level of the STRI.