How the Internet Promotes China's Exports: A Firm‐level Perspective

The development of information and communications technology (ICT), particularly the Internet, has reduced trade costs. However, it remains unclear whether these reduced costs are reflected in the “extensive margins” of firms’ exports (which refer to the probability of firms exporting) or the “intensive margins” (which refer to the value of firms’ export). To test this, we used the concepts of information cost and binary margins, an augmented trade model of firm heterogeneity, a two‐stage Heckman estimation, and data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey of Chinese firms in 2012. The results revealed that reduced trade costs from the use of ICT were positively related to extensive margins but that the connection with intensive margins was not significant. The results lead to the conclusion that reduced information costs related to a firm's exporting behavior were primarily reflected in variable trade costs. This study offers theoretical and empirical evidence for China's policies towards the Internet, which are relevant for the export of manufactured goods. The government should encourage the use of ICT to enhance firms’ export opportunities while facing current trade policy uncertainty.     

Are international environmental policies effective? The case of the Rotterdam and the Stockholm Conventions

This is the first paper to show that participation in an international environmental agreement has some effectiveness. Our identification strategy consists of applying difference-in-differences techniques in a panel data framework to various levels of data aggregation. We find that ratification of the Rotterdam Convention (RC) and the Stockholm Convention (SC) leads to a reduction in trade of hazardous substances from OECD to non-OECD countries. In particular, we find that when the exporter ratifies the RC, there is a reduction in the import of hazardous chemicals of about 7 percent. In the case of the SC, the results show significant reductions of around 16 percent in trade shipments of persistent organic pollutants. This reduction is more than double the effect found for the RC, which was expected due to a more restricted obligation imposed by the SC convention.     

Factors Influencing Organic and Fair Trade Coffee Growers Level of Engagement with Cooperatives: The Case of Coffee Farmers in Mexico

We study the factors influencing the percentage of organic and fair trade certified coffee sold through a cooperative by growers of five cooperatives in Mexico. The percentage of coffee sold through the cooperative was used as a proxy of growers’ engagement with a cooperative. Using factor analysis and a fractional probit regression, we evaluated the proposition that the level of engagement can be explained by transaction cost economics, social norms and connections, and farmer and farm business characteristics. We found that farm size, uncertainty regarding cooperative time of payment to the members and cooperative commitment on price to be paid negatively influence the level of engagement. In contrast, asset specificity, relational commitment, and price have a positive impact on engagement. Our results may help cooperatives and policy makers to build strategies aiming to increase this level of engagement. This is relevant because lower grower engagement has been found to be positively correlated with weak performing cooperatives.     

Size and information revelation in securities trading

We examine differences in information content between order submission sizes and trade sizes by U.S. equity traders. Increasing (decreasing) order submission (trade) size is reflective of information. The result suggests that better-informed traders want to trade in a large size, but that they engage in stealth trading practices or break larger orders into smaller sizes in order to conceal information. While prior studies tend to narrowly focus on trade executions at the market-centre level, our findings indicate that order submission size varies significantly from trade size and that both sizes are informative about future prices, albeit in an inverse manner.     

Do U.S. citizens support government intervention in agriculture? Implications for the political economy of agricultural protection

The persistence of agricultural protectionism throughout the world is intriguing given the widely recognized benefits of free trade. The political economy literature over the last decades has considered groups’ interest, politicians’ preferences, and their interactions within domestic politics as the primary forces driving agricultural protection. Yet, a growing body of studies suggests that it would be judicious to weigh in consumers’ or taxpayers’ perspectives in deciphering the nature of agricultural protection. This study examines U.S. citizens’ preferences about government intervention in agriculture and trade. Results show that they are in strong support of agricultural protection and their perceptions of national food security, family farms, environmental sustainability, and multifunctionality of agriculture play a significant role in shaping their support/opposition toward government intervention. The conventional political economy literature theorizes that consumers or taxpayers would oppose public policies that increase their tax burden; however, in the case of the farm sector, they have little incentive to voice their objections given the costs of farm programs are spread across a large number of consumers and taxpayers. U.S. citizens’ support for government involvement in agriculture as reported in this and other prior studies does not lend support for such political economy explanation.     

Microdata analysis of the consequences of free trade port policy: the case of Iran free zones

ABSTRACT

Creating free trade zones as a policy to motivate new investment and improve the local economic indicators might be of some benefits. Following of this policy in Iranian major port, however, resulted vice versa by aggravating the current account balance that is higher imports and the same horizon diminished export sums. We derive the micro data of trade for the Iranian major Imam port according to code arrangements of harmonic system (HS), which permits the clustering of different goods categories. Then we extracted the sums of survey data for the years before and after Imam port became free trade zone and applied fixed effect difference in difference (DID) method to capture the heterogeneity of unobserved variables. Our control port of analysis was Rajaee port the policy did not implemented. Results show that just as Imam free port’s Current Account Balance deteriorated by increasing import and dampening of export sums.     

The exceptional performance of exporters and labour market outcomes: evidence from Egyptian firms

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the manufacturing export market in Egypt after the Arab Spring using a novel firm-level census dataset from 2013. Export is very rare in Egypt. The conventional export premia are very high, except for total factor productivity. Exporters have stark effects on labour market outcomes, including wages, employment, demand for skilled and female workers, wage inequality, and job security. These findings have two important implications: (1) Manufacturing exports might be monopolized by large firms, and (2) promoting exports could improve labour market outcomes, especially for skilled and female workers.     

Gender,Decent Work,and Global Production Sharing in Indonesian Manufacturing

Abstract:

Global commodity chains reflect and affect gendered labor markets. This article uses the Decent Work framework from the International Labour Organization to analyze employment outcomes for Indonesian workers in manufacturing. This research investigates trends in feminized manufacturing sectors in variously sized firms. Regression analyses is used to evaluate how firm characteristics related to global production sharing effect decent work outcomes for women and men, as well as female share of employment itself. The results suggest that exports and FDI affect men and women differently and that feminization and decent work outcomes depend on how the sector is positioned along the global value chain.     

自贸区背景下海南现代物流与对外贸易耦合量化研究

从“海南自贸区(港)建设”战略、链接国家“一带一路”倡议视角出发,建立海南现代物流与对外贸易指标评估体系,根据协调发展度模型对海南2009-2018年现代物流和对外贸易发展的协调性进行测评。结果显示:海南现代物流综合发展指数高于对外贸易综合发展指数,海南对外贸易发展滞后于现代物流发展;海南现代物流与对外贸易发展逐渐呈协调发展趋势,二者协调发展水平不断提高。在此基础上提出强化国际物流协同建设、拓展对外贸易新业态与新模式等促进海南现代物流与对外贸易协调发展的建议。     

Trade uncertainties and the hedging abilities of Bitcoin

In this paper, we first estimate the monthly realised correlation, based on daily data, between stock returns of the United States (US) and Bitcoin returns. Then, we relate the realised correlation over the period October 2011 to May 2019 with a news-based measure of the growth of trade uncertainty of the US. Our results show that the realised correlation is negatively impacted by increases in trade uncertainty, which continues to hold under alternative robustness checks, suggesting that Bitcoin can act as a hedge relative to the conventional stock market in the wake of heightened trade policy-related uncertainties, and provide diversification benefits for investors.