Addressing climate change cause and effect on land cover and land use in South Asia

This paper evaluates the role of trade liberalization and agricultural intensification in mitigating climate change cause and effects on land use and emissions using a computable general equilibrium model. Our results indicate that cropland expansion triggered by climate-induced crop productivity changes results in deforestation and increases emissions in South Asia and globally. Global full trade liberalization on all goods is the optimum policy for South Asia despite significant global deforestation, but for the world, unilateral partial trade liberalization on all goods is a more appropriate policy while ensuring a considerable emissions reduction for South Asia. These results indicate that mitigation responses to climate change are location specific and no one trade policy is suitable at the regional and global levels. Lastly, agricultural intensification by improving productivity growth is the best strategy in land-based emissions mitigation, thereby avoiding the transformation of forest and pasture lands for agricultural cultivation both at regional and global levels.     

What drives stock market integration? An analysis using agribusiness stocks

This article explores the drivers of regional stock market integration with a focus on the agribusiness sector across relevant regional trade blocs around the world. We implement panel cointegration models to analyze the stock indices of agribusiness firms in the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), European Union (EU), Asia‐Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Based on the literature on market integration and stock return pricing, we identify nine possible determinants of stock market integration, which we separate into three categories: individual market performance, macroeconomic conditions, and agricultural trade. In our analysis, we account for agriculture‐specific factors to control for possible structural shifts in financial markets regimes by including the two main commodity price bubbles during last 20 years. Our results show that most of the variables included in our categories have been important factors in promoting regional stock market integration. Moreover, integration among regional stock markets was strengthened by the implementation of trade agreements. This effect is stronger in trade blocs with fewer members, such as NAFTA and MERCOSUR, compared with larger and more heterogeneous blocs, such as the EU and APEC.     

“一带一路”沿线国家与中国的贸易发展状况研究

研究目标：探索构建灯光数据对贸易研究的可行性。研究方法：运用1995~2012年“一带一路”沿线国家的面板数据，采用普通最小二乘法、泊松伪最大似然估计方法及工具变量法，以灯光数据作为GDP的替代量，通过传统引力模型搭建桥梁。研究发现：地理距离、边界及区域协定对中国与“一带一路”沿线国家之间贸易的显著影响表明灯光数据对贸易研究的有效性；同时，对1996~2012年贸易趋势的预测与实际贸易的对比结果显示，以灯光数据预测的“一带一路”贸易趋势与实际贸易基本吻合。研究创新：首次将夜间灯光数据应用于引力模型研究，对中国与“一带一路”沿线国家的贸易发展状况进行分析。研究价值：开拓夜间灯光数据研究贸易的先河，并结合引力模型的最新发展及微观基础思考拓展性的相关研究。     

Policy tolerance of economic crime? An empirical analysis of the effect of counterfeiting on Italian trade

Some governments seem ambivalent towards economic crime because, on the one hand, there are adverse effects on competition and legal businesses; on the other hand, there are benefits through (shadow) employment and income in less-developed areas, as well as benefits through relations of political clientage. We focus on counterfeiting and its economic effects on trade in Italy during the economic crisis. Using a newly built regional dataset and a dynamic panel model, we find evidence of the dual impact of counterfeiting. The production (and exchange) of fake goods depresses the legal market that relies on intellectual property rights but supports shadow-economic activities for the benefit of illegal workers, criminal organisations, and political clientele. We show that the negative effects outweigh the positive effects.     

What drives cross-country differences in export variety? A bilateral panel approach

A worldwide event like the 2020 Coronavirus outbreak can only reinforce the interest in modelling trade diversification as a key factor in countries’ vulnerability to external shocks. This paper adopts a detailed relative framework to study the determinants of product-level export variety in a large bilateral panel of developing and developed economies (16,770 country pairs in the period 1988–2014). We find that country pairs characterized by large differentials in productivity and in the makeup of the labour force differ in export variety patterns. This result holds after controlling for other endowments and for trade costs. Further, productivity plays a significant role in the reduction of export variety dissimilarities between countries belonging to different income groups. Hence, without successful technological convergence the low-income economies will not be able to reduce their exposure to export risk.     

Vulnerability to climate change: Are innovative countries in a better position?

The impact of climate change on organizations and economies remains one of the most significant yet underestimated threats. Although the consequences of climate change have started to gain attention among policy makers, international business research on this issue is lagging behind. Drawing from the knowledge and innovation literatures, we explore the impact of a country’s degree of innovation on its vulnerability to climate change. Using a longitudinal sample of 73 countries for the years of 1998–2013, we examine the impact of innovation, openness to trade, and regulatory quality on a country’s vulnerability to climate change. We find that R&D expenditures as a percentage of GDP (innovation input), openness to trade, and regulatory quality decrease a country’s vulnerability to climate change. We also find that openness to trade moderates the effect of patenting rates (innovation output) on a country’s vulnerability to climate change.     

我国自贸试验区发展态势、制约因素与未来展望

面对世界经贸关系的变化和全球治理秩序的重构,以及国内经济形势对改革开放的新要求,我国自2013年以来已经设立18个自贸试验区。作为改革开放的"制度试验田",自贸试验区在制度创新和试点经验的推广方面取得了良好效果,各项经济指标表现优异,但也存在发展引领效果不明显、服务业对外开放程度不高、自主改革创新权限不够高等问题。推动自贸试验区发展,应着力提高自贸试验区改革创新的自主权限,加快服务业对外开放,协同推进汇率、利率市场化改革与资本账户开放,构建全面有效的风险管理体系,发挥平台支撑和关键节点作用,将自贸试验区战略与国家区域战略和"一带一路"倡议相结合。     

Trade credit and supplier competition

This paper examines how competition among suppliers affects their willingness to provide trade credit financing. Trade credit extended by a supplier to a cash constrained retailer allows the latter to increase cash purchases from its other suppliers, leading to a free rider problem. A supplier that represents a smaller share of the retailer’s purchases internalizes a smaller part of the benefit from increased spending by the retailer and, as a result, extends less trade credit relative to its sales. In consequence, retailers with dispersed suppliers obtain less trade credit than those whose suppliers are more concentrated. The free rider problem is especially detrimental to a trade creditor when the free-riding suppliers are its product market competitors, leading to a negative relation between product substitutability among suppliers to a given retailer and trade credit that the former provide to the latter. We test the model using both simulated and real data. The estimated relations are consistent with the model’s predictions and are statistically and economically significant.     

Trade and dietary diversity in Eastern Europe and Central Asia

In public and academic debates, the linkages between agricultural markets and nutrition across the world are vividly discussed. This paper contributes to the ongoing debate by analyzing the relationship between greater openness to trade and dietary diversity. It focuses on the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia where trade reforms triggered growth in trade flows and foreign direct investment, which in turn affected food systems in these countries. This shift provides a natural experiment for studying the effects of trade openness on agricultural markets and consumer behaviour. Reduction in trade barriers, for instance in the context of the accession to the WTO and the EU, and the gradual integration with world markets after 1991 had implications for diets through changes in production, prices and incomes. We utilize country-level panel data for 26 post-communist countries in the period 1996–2013 to assess the effects of trade costs, agricultural trade openness and incomes on dietary diversity measured by the Shannon entropy index. The results from fixed effects and instrumental variables estimation are consistent with previous findings that income growth affects dietary diversity positively. They also provide novel evidence that trade barriers reduce variety of products available in domestic markets, in particular fruits and vegetables.     

Dynamic estimation of the relationship between trade openness and output growth in Asia

This paper studies the relationship between trade openness and output growth for a sample of twenty-three Asian countries using both a static OLS and a dynamic ECM estimation models. At the country specific level, the findings of this study provide robust empirical evidence indicating that higher revealed trade openness is not the main engine explaining the Asian economic-growth miracle. In particular, the authors find that physical capital accumulation is at the core of the observed long-run output per worker growth. At the regional level, the authors observe a marked difference between the pre and post 1997–1998 financial crisis, whereas, in the post period, trade openness has a positive and significant effect on output growth. In general, the results from the dynamic estimations prove that the conventional OLS static estimates underestimate the effect of investment on output growth. In addition, the dynamic model allows for a separation of gains from trade between short term and long term. The paper results also provide evidence in support of the idea that, countries with a growing degree of trade openness may experience faster per-capita output growth through gains in productivity associated to capital accumulation, rather than the assumed technological spillover effects from the trading sector. Again, at the regional level in the post financial crisis period both short term and long term gains from trade are relevant to growth. Why more trade does not necessarily imply faster growth at all levels of revealed trade openness growth, remains a conundrum.