Beyond Dutch disease

How does the deterioration of rule of law in Russia in recent years affect its ability to move away from an export pattern dominated by natural resources? We investigate this question using three datasets for Russia's bilateral trade relations for goods, services and investment at disaggregated level with its partner countries over the world. Our empirical analysis shows that the deterioration of the rule of law in Russia since 2003 has affected the long‐run trade performance of Russia in sophisticated and technology‐intensive manufactured goods, as well as its inward investments with advanced economies. It is precisely this type of trade that Russia should nurture to diversify away from hydrocarbons export dependence. Our statistical analysis also shows that Russia remains to a large extent an outlier within the multilateral trading system. It exports disproportionately less to partner countries which are or had become members of the WTO over our period of analysis. Russia's trade appears to have been negatively affected by the accession of these countries to the WTO. Russia itself finally acceded to the WTO in July 2012 amidst signs of a modest improvement of its rule‐of‐law indicators.     

Trade Integration and Business Cycle Convergence: Is the Relation Robust across Time and Space?*

In this paper we investigate the relationship between trade intensity and the business cycle correlation using a panel data set taken from 24 countries over the period 1959–2003. Most previous studies did not account for the possibility that the business cycle correlation may be influenced by unobservable country‐pair specific effects. Our estimates, using both fixed‐ and random‐effects methodologies, suggest that trade intensity and the business cycle correlation are positively related to one another. However, detailed investigation shows that this relationship exists mainly for the European countries.     

With whom do you trade? Defensive innovation and the skill‐bias

Abstract We examine whether increased trade with countries with ineffective protection of intellectual property has contributed to the skill‐deepening of the 1980s. We construct an index of effective protection of intellectual property at the country level, combining data on protection of patents and rule of law. Next, we construct an industry‐specific version of this index, using as weights each country's trade share in the total trade of the industry. We find a decline in this trade‐weighted index, owing to a rise in trade with countries with low effective protection of intellectual property, which explains 29% of the rise in within‐industry skill‐intensity.     

Does complexity explain the structure of trade?

This paper analyzes whether complexity, measured by the number of skilled tasks that are performed in production, explains countries’ commodity trade structure. We modify the Romalis ( 2004 ) model to incorporate advantage differences in complexity across commodities together with differences in the number of mistakes made by workers in the production process in developed and developing countries as a source of comparative advantage. Our model predicts that the share of developed countries in world trade increases with products’ complexity. Empirical tests confirm this prediction. Moreover, we find that complexity complements the explanation provided by skill‐intensity on countries’ commodity trade structure.     

How remote is the offshoring threat?

Advances in communication technology make it possible for workers in India to supply business services to head offices located anywhere. This has the potential to put high-wage workers in direct competition with much lower paid Indian workers. Service trade, however, like goods trade, is subject to strong distance effects, implying that the remote supply of services remains limited. We investigate this proposition by deriving a gravity-like equation for service trade and estimating it for a large sample of countries and different categories of service trade. We find that distance costs are high but are declining over time. Our estimates suggest that delivery costs create a significant advantage for local workers relative to competing workers in distant countries.     

Trade facilitation and country size

It is argued that compared with large countries, small countries rely more on trade and therefore are more likely to adopt liberal trading policies. The present paper extends this idea beyond the conventional trade openness measures by analyzing the relationship between country size and the number of documents required to export and import, a measure of trade facilitation. Three important results follow. First, trade facilitation does improve as country size becomes smaller; that is, small countries perform better than large countries in terms of trade facilitation. Second, the relationship between country size and trade facilitation is nonlinear, much stronger for the relatively small than the large countries. Third, contrary to what existing studies might suggest, the relationship between country size and trade facilitation does not appear to be driven by the fact that small countries trade more as a proportion of their gross domestic product than the large countries.     

China's potential future growth and gains from trade policy bargaining: Some numerical simulation results

Numerical simulation analysis of bargaining solutions is little developed in existing literature. In this paper, we use a numerical general equilibrium model which captures China and her major trading partners and examine the outcomes of trade policy bargaining solutions (bargaining over tariffs and financial transfers) over time, and then measure both absolute and relative gains to China from trade bargaining. These measurements are important for policy making. Our simulation results indicate that China's welfare gain from trade bargaining will increase over time if countries keep their present higher GDP growth rates for several decades, but there are major difference when using different bargaining solution concepts. These differences have not been noted in existing literature but have an intuitive explanation. Our results also indicate that if China jointly bargains along with India, Brazil and other developing countries with the OECD, and when we use PPP to adjust China's relative GDP size China's gain will further increase.     

On `indirect' trade-related R&D spillovers

An influential literature argues that trade promotes knowledge flows and technology transmission between trading partners. This literature focuses on `direct' research and development (R&D) spillovers which are related to the levels of R&D produced by the trading partners. In this paper, we argue that `indirect' trade-related R&D spillovers also take place between countries, even if they do not trade with each other. These `indirect' spillovers are associated with available rather than with produced levels of R&D. Our empirical results suggest that these `indirect' trade-related spillovers are at least as important as the `direct' ones, and strengthen the view that trade does matter for the international transmission of R&D. They also suggest that, due to the existence of these `indirect' effects, bilateral trade patterns are relatively less important determinants of the level of foreign R&D spillovers acquired through trade.     

Endogenous trade bloc formation in an asymmetric world

This paper investigates how variations in endowments and the structure of preferences impact on the coalition formation decisions of asymmetric countries. There exist relatively few general results on the relationship between country characteristics and trade bloc formation. Here, new light is shed on this issue by systematically simulating bloc formation and by explicitly analysing the blocking behaviour of coalitions. A general equilibrium model of world trade is implemented with equilibrium coalition formation being modelled using the equilibrium concept of the core. It is found that global free trade is observed when all countries are similar. Customs unions tend to form between countries with ‘adjacent’ consumer preferences or with ‘adjacent’ endowments of their export commodity. Finally, in contrast to the existing literature but consistent with observed behaviour, it is found that free trade areas often Pareto dominate customs unions, provided consumer preferences differ sufficiently.     

Foreign direct investment and business cycle co-movements: The panel data evidence

The previous literature has largely overlooked the possible channels through which foreign direct investment (FDI) might influence business cycle synchronization. In this study we analyze the linkages that exist among FDI, trade and industrial dissimilarity in relation to business cycle co-movements using a panel data set taken from 77 pairs of developed countries. The error component three-stage least squares (EC3SLS) estimates from a simultaneous equations model with panel data are shown to be superior to the estimates obtained from single equation models or simultaneous equations models with cross-sectional data. Our results indicate that FDI serves as a channel of international business cycle transmission that is equally important as the channels of trade and monetary policy. On the contrary, industrial dissimilarity is identified as having an indirect impact on the business cycle correlation through trade and FDI. Furthermore, our findings suggest that in our sample FDI is of the horizontal type and tends to substitute for trade.     

Trade openness and economic growth: a cross-country empirical investigation

This paper demonstrates that trade liberalization does not have a simple and straightforward relationship with growth using a large number of openness measures for a cross section of countries over the last three decades. We use two groups of trade openness measures. The regression results for numerous trade intensity ratios are mostly consistent with the existing literature. However, contrary to the conventional view on the growth effects of trade barriers, our estimation results show that trade barriers are positively and, in most specifications, significantly associated with growth, especially for developing countries and they are consistent with the findings of theoretical growth and development literature.     

The international risk sharing puzzle is at business cycle and lower frequency

Abstract We decompose the correlation between relative consumption and the real exchange rate in its dynamic components at different frequencies. Using multivariate spectral analysis techniques, we show that, at odds with a high degree of risk sharing, in most OECD countries the dynamic correlation tends to be quite negative, and significantly so, at frequencies lower than two years – the appropriate frequencies for assessing the performance of international business cycle models. Theoretically, we show that the dynamic correlation over different frequencies predicted by standard open economy models is the sum of two terms: a term constant across frequencies, which can be negative when uninsurable risk is large; a term variable across frequencies, which in bond economies is necessarily positive, reflecting the insurance intertemporal trade provides against forecastable contingencies. Numerical analysis suggests that leading mechanisms proposed by the literature to account for the puzzle are consistent with the evidence across the spectrum.     

Trade, regulations, and income

We examine the relationship between openness and per-capita income using cross-country data from 126 countries. We find that trade leads to a higher standard of living in flexible economies, but not in rigid economies. Business regulation, especially on firm entry, is more important than financial development, higher education, or rule of law as a complementary policy to trade liberalization. Specifically, after controlling for the standard determinants of per-capita income, our results imply that a 1% increase in trade is associated with more than a one-half percent rise in per-capita income in economies that facilitate firm entry, but has no positive income effects in more rigid economies. The findings are consistent with Schumpeterian “creative destruction”, which highlights the importance of new business entry in economic performance, and with previous firm-level studies showing that the beneficial effects of trade liberalization come largely from an intra-sectoral reallocation of resources.     

Trade costs and the timing of competition policy adoption

Abstract This paper first presents stylized evidence showing how the date of the adoption of competition policy is correlated with country size. Smaller countries tend to adopt competition policy later. We then present a theoretical model with countries of different size, trade costs, and firms competing à la Cournot. In the model we show that reduced trade costs following from increasing globalization affect countries differently depending on their size. This has implications for the incentives to introduce competition policy. The predictions of the model are consistent with the empirical regularity presented.     

Capital mobility,openness, and saving-investment relationship in Asia

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the relationship between openness to trade and saving-investment behaviour in Asia during the period 1990–2006. We use this relationship to examine whether those Asian countries that are more open to trade and enjoy less trade barriers have also higher degree of capital mobility. Cluster analysis is used to classify the countries into different groups according to the share of trade in their gross domestic products and their average tariff rates. The goal is to place the countries that are similar to each other in terms of their trade policy in one group. We apply the Generalized Least Square (GLS) technique to a set of balanced panel error correction models to estimate the short- and long-run relationship between saving and investment. The estimation results indicate that there exist long-run equilibrium relationships between domestic saving and investment in all groups regardless of their degree of trade openness. Moreover, contrary to Amirkhalkhali and Dar (2007) for the case of OECD, we find out that more openness in terms of trade policy is associated with higher degree of capital mobility for the case of Asian countries. One policy implication of this result for the Asian economies is that trade openness can be used as a strategy to attract capital from abroad. Our findings also confirm the prediction of new open economy macroeconomic models regarding the short- and long-run behaviour of current account.     

The transmission of business cyclesImplications for EMU enlargement1

We show that countries characterized by large bilateral trade and financial flows tend to have more correlated business cycles. However, we also find that countries with divergent fiscal policies and highly regulated labour markets are subject to idiosyncratic cycles. Applying these results to the new member states of the EU weakens the optimistic view towards the monetary integration of these countries into the euro area, which is frequently found in the literature. Although our results suggest that extensive trade and financial linkages are likely to result in further increases in business cycle correlation, an increase in labour market regulation and the pursuit of national fiscal policies may result in a counteracting effect.     

Is International Trade Relevant to Social Trust Formation? Evidence from Cross-country Analysis

In this paper, we investigate whether international trade itself can contribute to the level of generalized trust. We extend the existing empirical research in several ways. First, we use a larger sample size, we test and reject the treatment of international trade as an exogenous variable, and we address trade endogeneity using instrumental variables estimators. Second, we use geographical variables and international trade prices to instrument for international trade. Third, we perform instrumental variables diagnostics tests to determine the suitability and relevance of our instruments; we also perform tests of the statistical significance of our parameter of interest that are robust to the presence of weak instruments. Our empirical analysis suggests that international trade does have a significant and relatively large positive effect on social trust and reconfirms the role played by other variables like income inequality in the formation of trust found in the literature.     

STRATEGIC TRADE AND DELEGATED COMPETITION WITH ENDOGENOUS QUALITY CHOICE: IS EXPORT POLICY NEEDED?

This paper introduces the relative‐performance contract into a vertically differentiated product market and examines how the optimal trade policy and quality choice respond to the incentive mechanism. We find that the high quality firm makes better use of the delegation than the low quality firm in a cross‐border decentralized model. The main difference between the present paper and the strategic trade theory literature is that in this paper the optimal policy is free trade, which does not depend on whether firms compete by prices or quantities, and on whether the goods are substitutes or full complements.     

Endogenous trading bloc formation in a North-South global economy

Abstract .  The majority of the trading blocs to date are between similar countries, rather than between developed and developing countries. This paper provides a rationale for why trading blocs among similar countries may arise as an equilibrium phenomenon. It develops a model of an asymmetric world economy in which there are at least four countries. The countries are differentiated with respect to their market size and they choose their trading partners. In the coalition-proof Nash equilibrium, either there is global free trade or free trade areas are formed among similar countries.     

Sovereign defaulters: Do international capital markets punish them?

We empirically study whether countries that default on their debt experience a reduction in their capital inflows, as suggested by the literature. Our data contain information on (i) the defaulter countries and their creditors and (ii) bilateral foreign direct investment (FDI) flows. With these we can study how FDI flows are affected by sovereign default by distinguishing between those flows coming from defaulters' creditor countries and others. According to our estimations, this distinction is crucial since the decline of FDI in flows after default is markedly concentrated on those flows originating in defaulters' creditor countries. The decay in FDI flows is higher in the years closer to the default date and for countries that have defaulted more times. We do not find evidence that countries shut their doors to defaulters' investment abroad, which is also a cost of default suggested in the literature.