International trade and technical progress: the role of capital good imports in Portugal>

This paper develops an empirical analysis of the relationship between sectoral openness to capital good imports and technological sophistication. Input-output data from Portugal are used to demonstrate a strong relation between capital imports and sectoral technological levels as measured by vertically integrated labour coefficients. Both regression and non-parametric analyses are used. Such a relationship demonstrates the necessity of breaking out of the long-held focus on one-time exchange gains by trade theorists. It is argued that productivity gains from trade resulting from transfers of technology are primary gains of great importance and must be incorporated into theoretical work on trade. The paper also demonstrates a strong connection between a sector's capital imports and the technical training of the workforce of the sector. This suggests a relation between a sector's level of technology and its ability to make further advances through capital imports embodying advanced foreign technology. Sectors (countries) need technically trained workers in order to achieve a successful transfer. Interestingly, it is found that while Portugal clearly utilized trade with its more developed trading partners to augment its technology, this was not enough to avoid a technological divergence from its more developed neighbours. Several reasons for this are posited.     

Indra-Industry Trade,Endogenous Technical Change,Wage Inequality and Welfare

By using alternative intra-industry trade models (1. New goods cannot be introduced into the economy; 2. The possibility for a set of capital goods available in the economy to vary; the models consider the existence of intersectoral linkages), I show by means of Applied General Equilibrium (AGE) analysis that trade rises wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers; but the impact on wage inequality is far larger, when countries are assumed to exchange differentiated capital goods. The latter result has been obtained by using an imperfect competitive model, which embodies a sector bias technological change that arises from trade. In addition, the gains from trade, insignificant under the standard trade hypotheses, are extraordinarily large when endogenous technological change is taken into account. The main policy conclusion is that if policy makers of flexible wage economies introduce trade barriers to reduce wage inequality, these protective measures, by affecting the diffusion of technology, would cause a large welfare loss. [D58, f12, F43, J3, O3]     

Trade and Global Income Inequality with Frictional Labor Markets: A Lesson from the Canada–US Free Trade Agreement

This paper develops a two-country trade model with frictional labor market structures to investigate the link between increased openness to trade and cross-country income inequality. Calibrated to US–Canadian data, the model simulation results show that the Canada–US Free Trade Agreement benefited Canada, the country with relatively higher capital intensity, more due to its capacity to flexibly expand in response to an increase in product demand. The results from counterfactual experiments indicate that increased capital intensity in the US is expected to increase gains from trade in both countries while making the distribution of gains less unequal.     

Sectoral FTA gains,conflicts, and the role of interindustry factor mobility: Evidence from Korea's free trade agreement

Free trade agreements (FTAs) can ignite domestic conflicts between export- and import-competing industries over trade gains. However, if the factors of production, such as capital and labour, move freely across industries, the returns to factor owners will quickly converge. Then, sectoral conflicts over FTAs will be less likely to arise. We analyse the case of South Korea's FTAs to measure (a) sectoral FTA gains and (b) interindustry factor mobility and to examine (c) the role of interindustry factor mobility in mitigating sectoral conflicts over trade policies. South Korea is an ideal case study due to the low barriers to domestic geographic mobility and high trade dependence. Based on data on its trade with 252 countries and factor returns between 2002 and 2017, we find that export industries did not gain much from the FTAs, while the import-competing agricultural sector was the winner. Sectoral conflicts greatly decreased over 2008–2010. Interindustry capital mobility plays a significant role in weakening the sectoral conflicts, while the impact of interindustry labour mobility is limited.     

Order with Some Law: Complementarity versus Substitution of Formal and Informal Arrangements

While some argue that incomplete incentive contracts facilitatethe self-enforcement of informal dealings, other authors submitthat they substitute for or "crowd out" social norms supportinginformal arrangements. We use experimental evidence to testthese theories by manipulating the extent to which individualstransact repeatedly and the level of contract costs. We findthat, by enforcing contractible exchange dimensions, contractsfacilitate the self-enforcement of noncontractible dimensions.This complementarity effect is particularly important when repetitionis unlikely and thus self-enforcement is difficult. Althoughour data suggest the existence of reciprocity as an alternative,informal enforcement mechanism, we do not find evidence thatcontracts substitute for this social norm.     

Human capital and measurable dynamic gains from economic integration: An application to the economic integration of North and South America

The paper looks at the source of dynamic gains to trade liberalization using a two-country model with both physical and human capital accumulation. The model is calibrated and used to examine the effect of the economic integration of Canada and the United States with Latin America. The analysis assumes that differences in productivity levels between regions are due entirely to differences in human and physical capital endowments. Key assumptions are that capital is internationally mobile and human capital formation is income constrained. The simulated impact of moving to a hemispheric free trade area is significant. The long-run impacts are also different from the short-run efficiency effect predicted by conventional static triangle-rectangle analysis. The long-runmultiplier effect on static output gains are on the order of 2.0 to 2.5 for the South—that is long-run output gains are 2.0 to 2.5 times predicted short-run static gains. In the case of the North, static predictions of gain are ambiguous in sign over the longer run; in some cases there are small dynamic gains-in others. small losses. Investment diversion toward Latin America is a prominent characteristic of the results.     

SOCIAL CAPITAL,GOVERNANCE AND PERFORMANCE OF ETHIOPIAN COFFEE COOPERATIVES

ABSTRACT: The performance of agrarian cooperatives strongly depends on the interaction between internal cohesion and external exchange. Empirical assessments of social capital and trust within cooperatives suggest that market involvement could enhance collective action. This relationship may not hold, however, under circumstances of heterogeneous membership and strong state control. We use field data from a comparative sample of 500 coffee farmers belonging to five cooperatives of Sidama Cooperative Union, Ethiopia to outline how differences in economic performance are related to the structure of social networks. We identify clear trade‐offs between bonding and bridging social capital that favour remotely located cooperatives.     

Growth,expectations and tariffs

We present a growth model of international trade in which expectations about profitability and growth influence innovation and investment. Adaptive learning dynamics determine transition paths for countries with differing structural parameters. Countries limiting trade by tariffs on imports of capital goods can experience gains in growth and perceived utility for a finite time, whereas the rest of the world is adversely affected. Asymmetric gains persist longer when structural advantages of the country applying tariffs are larger. Substantial differences in levels of innovation, output and utility can appear within our asymmetric country setting.     

Inflation and capital gains taxes in a small open economy

Inflation distorts an economy through many channels. This paper highlights the interaction between inflation and capital gains tax and their distortions to a small open economy through the financial market. This research captures several observations. First, capital formation or investment is an important channel for consumption smoothing over the life cycles. Second, capital gains are taxed only when the gains are realized. Third, inflation introduces an upward bias in the calculation of tax base. Thus, a capital gains tax in the presence of inflation can have a significant welfare effect even though its contribution to the government revenue is relatively small. The quantitative analysis shows that high inflation alone can lower social welfare. This problem becomes more severe when capital gains tax is introduced in an inflationary economy. The implicit inflation tax can be more hazardous to the economy than the explicit counterpart.     

Endogenous Imitation and Technology Absorption in a Model of North–South Trade

Abstract

This paper considers the transfer of technology from the North to the South that occurs through trade in high-technology goods and explicitly models the ‘reverse-engineering’ process that allows the South to assimilate new technologies. A key finding of this study is that the South's rate of growth is dictated by the size of the country's human capital, which determines its absorptive capacity and its ability to assimilate knowledge from the North. We find that while a Southern country that is poor in human capital can only imitate, Southern countries that possess sufficiently large human capital endowments, beyond a certain threshold, signal the onset of innovation. We also find that the North enjoys a higher rate of innovation and growth with trade than without. North's gains are the highest when it trades with a human-capital ‘poor’ South, because imitation increases South's demand for Northern intermediates. But trade with the Southern countries that are human capital rich (and therefore involved in innovation), dampens their demand for Northern imports, adversely affecting North's growth. The model predicts growth convergence between the North and a South that is well passed the threshold for innovation.     

Anarchy, efficiency, and redistribution

This paper develops a contractarian theory of the state and the existence of redistribution. The existence of rules of redistribution is explained without any recourse to the risk-aversion of agents. No veil of ignorance is needed. This avoids obligational problems inherent in most other contractarian theories of justice. Hence, this paper departs from the standard legitimization of redistribution as fundamental insurance and interprets it as stemming from a principle of reciprocity in trade. Since this paper deals with an anarchic society, the implementation of redistributional rules is constrained by the assumption of self-enforcement. We show that this assumption changes the interpretation of the state: the state is characterized by a particular design of equilibrium strategies, not by the existence of enforcement agencies.     

Real exchange rates,economic performance,and trade balances in the central european free trade association

The relationships between real exchange rates dynamics, domestic economic growth, and external economic positions are examined for four East European countries: Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. Results show that in Poland the dynamic of the trade balance is independent of both the real exchange rate and industrial production. In both Hungary and Slovakia, trade balances appear to have strong autonomous components, albeit in circumstances where the influence of real exchange rates and industrial production dynamics cannot be entirely denied. The Czech Republic's situation is, however, substantially different from its Central European Free Trade Assocation partners. The growing trade balance deficit appears to be determined by both the continuing real appreciation of the Czech currency and a mildly accelerating industrial production growth. Both are the consequence of accelerating capital inflow.     

Trade Liberalization in the Presence of Foreign Direct Investment and Tax Credits: Estimates for Costa Rica

The paper uses a calibrated general-equilibrium model to quantify the welfare impact of trade liberalization—and compute the optimal tariff structure—for Costa Rica when trade-policy-induced foreign direct investment and international capital taxation with credits are present. It shows that complete trade liberalization reduces Costa Rica's welfare, as it leads to an outflow of capital and loss of tax revenue which more than offset the efficiency gains from an enhanced resource allocation. The optimal tariff structure for the Costa Rican economy turns out to be a mixture of relatively small import tariffs and subsidies.     

Terms of Trade,Competitive Advantage,and Trade Patterns

This paper investigates the competitive determination of the pattern of trade, seen as a choice of technique problem within a two-country, two-commodity, circulating capital model. It seeks to re-examine the analytical premises of the principle of comparative advantage. The establishment of competitive advantage is addressed in a Sraffian framework that allows the integration of the choice of technique problem to issues of growth and distribution. The focus is on exploring the validity of this principle when capital is internationally immobile—the context in which the principle was first postulated. Capital immobility imparts a degree freedom to the model. Closing the model and establishing a trade outcome on the basis of the principle of comparative advantage depends on the specification of appropriate boundary conditions. These boundary conditions boil down to some specification of relative scales of the trading partners and the scope for complete specialization and mutually beneficial gains from trade is circumscribed.     

关于加工贸易、实际汇率与经常账户的分析

考虑我国自然资源相对缺乏、加工贸易快速发展、实行固定汇率制度和强制结售汇制度等基本特征,建立了一个分析我国实际汇率和经常账户问题的计量模型,并对人民币实际汇率与经常账户的关系进行了实证研究。结果表明,我国经常账户持续顺差并非由汇率低估所致,人民币汇率调整难以根本解决经常账户持续顺差问题。资本管制放松、社会保障体系不健全和收入差距逐渐加大是我国1994年以来经常账户持续顺差的主要原因。在我国对外开放程度日益提高的情况下,妥善处理我国的经常账户持续顺差问题应从以下几个方面入手:稳定实际利率、名义汇率升值、加快社会保障体系建设和缩小居民收入差距。     

Dynamic Gains from International Trade with Imperfect Competition and Market Power

This paper revisits the gains from trade under imperfect competition by explicitly modeling strategic competition and entry. The papers highlights a welfare cost of imperfect competition, due to inefficiently high entry. Through increasing competition, international trade lowers price–cost markups and reduces excessive entry. This adds on a "competitive" channel for gains from trade to the well-known "product diversity" channel from previous literature. Both channels will increase the return to investment and raise the steady-state capital stock. An alternative case is possible, however, where there is inefficiently low entry. In that case, trade tends to be "anticompetitive," raising price–cost markups and encouraging increased entry.     

Random competitive exchange: Price distributions and gains from trade

This paper studies the behavior of a competitive exchange under uncertain preferences and random indivisible endowments. We obtain explicit closed-form results for the price distribution and expected gains from trade, both for case where the market is “thin” and the number of traders is low, and for the asymptotic case where the number of traders tends to infinity. We demonstrate that increasing the number of traders reduces price variability and increases the expected gains from trade, and that increasing the variability of traders' reservation prices increases price variability as well as the expected asymptotic gains from trade.     

Economics in Crisis: Severe and Logical Contradictions of Classical, Keynesian, and Popular Trade Models

The paper examines three popular models that form the foundation of modern economics. The author concludes that two of the three, the classical and the Keynesian, are seriously deficient in logic, whereas the third, dealing with gains from trade, is partially lacking in logic. Classical and neo–Keynesian approaches require desired investment to expand during recessions, whereas the trade model requires real GDP to rise without any rise in employment, capital stock, or technology. The paper offers an alternative macro framework that is free from the limitations of conventional models. Money is either neutral or non–neutral, depending on whether the economy is operating below or at full capacity. Wages are strictly determined in the labor market, yet employment is influenced by aggregate demand. The alternative model thus combines the attractive features of classical and Keynesian frameworks.     

Preferential trade and mis-invoicing: Some analytical implications

This paper examines how different trade policies affect illegal trade practices, foreign exchange market and the degree of illegal capital outflow. It builds up a three-country preferential–non-preferential trade model where low or zero tariff prevails in the preferential trade channel and higher tariff is exercised in the non-preferential trade channel. We show that initially the preferential trade channel is likely to encourage illegal capital outflow and non-preferential trade channel is conducive for illegal transactions in foreign exchange in the local market. But finally a low tariff regime takes care of both illegal capital outflow and black market for foreign exchange.     

SOCIAL ANIMAL HOUSE: THE ECONOMIC AND ACADEMIC CONSEQUENCES OF FRATERNITY MEMBERSHIP

We exploit changes in the residential and social environment on campus to identify the economic and academic consequences of fraternity membership at a small Northeastern college. Our estimates suggest that these consequences are large, with fraternity membership lowering student grade point average by approximately 0.25 points on the traditional 4‐point scale, but raising future income by approximately 36%, for those students whose decision about membership is affected by changes in the environment. These results suggest that fraternity membership causally produces large gains in social capital, which more than outweigh its negative effects on human capital for potential members. Alcohol‐related behavior does not explain much of the effects of fraternity membership on either the human capital or social capital effects. These findings suggest that college administrators face significant trade‐offs when crafting policies related to Greek life on campus. (JEL I23, J24, I12)