Capturing the Implications of Services Trade Liberalization

This paper evaluates the impact of service sector trade liberalization on the world economy by a ten-region, eleven-sector CGE model with import embodied technology transfer from developed countries to developing countries. Simulation results show that service sector trade liberalization not only directly affects world service production and trade, but also has significant implications for other sectors in the economy. The major channel of the impact is through inter-industry input-output relations and TFP growth induced from services imported by developing countries from developed countries, which may be embodied with new information and advanced technology.     

Impact of trade liberalization on firm's labour demand by skill: The case of Tunisian manufacturing

This paper investigates the impact of the trade liberalization process in Tunisia on employment by distinguishing different skills and different types of firms using micro level data covering the period of 1983–1994. There is considerable disagreement among analysts on the impact of recent trade reforms upon labour. Our contribution to these debates in this paper is essentially an empirical issue. The analysis of a Tunisian firm's data may be viewed as an attempt to apprehend how employment in Tunisia, a developing country, adjusted to the trade reforms. Using micro-level detail on individual firms, we are able to trace the relationship between changes in trade policies and manufacturing employment at firm level and by skill. Although trade reforms are generally implemented at the sector level, their effects may vary significantly across firm characteristics such as output orientation. We measure the effects of trade policy on employment according to different types of firms. We also associate changes in employment directly with a measure of change in trade protection, rather than linking them to changes in imports and exports which would be more common. The results suggest that the impact of trade liberalization on labour demand depends on a firm's characteristics. In particular, the estimates obtained suggest that trade liberalization has beneficial effects on employment for exporting-firms. Conversely, trade liberalization has negative and disciplinary effects on employment for domestically oriented firms. The reduction in tariff levels conducted in this first phase of liberalization in Tunisia seems to have had effects with different intensity on unskilled labour and on skilled labour; this justifies the examination of these two skills.     

基于引力模型的服务贸易决定因素分析

近年来,服务贸易在世界经济中的重要性日益增加。研究影响中国服务贸易发展的决定因素,并探寻合理化的路径以促进服务贸易发展,具有较强的现实意义。研究发现,引力模型适用于中国对外服务贸易决定因素的解释,双边服务贸易额与两国的GDP成正比,与距离成反比。而且,两国的经济规模差异越小,双边贸易量就越大。另外,贸易伙伴国服务业产值占比的上升,有利于增进中国对其服务进口。但是,中国服务业产值占比的增加,并未提升中国服务贸易的出口能力。因此,必须高度重视服务业的发展,促进工业与服务业关系的互动协调,在关键领域形成具有自主知识产权的核心专利和技术标准,大力发展知识、资本、技术密集型服务业。     

绿色贸易壁垒的特征、影响及对策

随着世界贸易自由化的进一步发展,一种新的贸易保护策略——绿色贸易壁垒随之而来,绿色贸易壁垒是近年来发达国家限制发展中国家产品进入其国内市场的重要贸易保护措施之一。我国作为发展中国家,出口产品深受绿色贸易壁垒之害。     

The Impact of Trade Liberalization on Micro Enterprises: Do Banks Matter? Evidence from Indian Manufacturing

This paper looks at the impact of trade liberalization on micro enterprises with differential access to banks. I use Indian data on rural micro enterprises employing less than ten workers in the manufacturing sector to find that trade liberalization, measured by a fall in the tariff, is associated with a larger increase or a smaller decrease in output, capital–labour ratio and labour productivity in districts with a larger number of bank branches per capita. Evidence is consistent with strong complementarities between trade liberalization effects, and the economic dynamism and access to financial intermediation associated with greater bank presence in the enterprise's location. The study underscores that trade liberalization can be beneficial to micro entrepreneurs under certain conditions and emphasizes reallocation resulting from trade liberalization. The study hence highlights the role for development policy in exploiting gains from trade.     

全球化背景下我国出口退税政策的经济效应

本文通过将出口退税政策变量纳入全球模拟(GSIM)模型,从产业层面和全球视角对出口退税政策通过价格机制影响有关国家的生产、进出口贸易流量、生产者与消费者福利等经济活动进行理论分析。并基于2007年全球纺织品生产与贸易数据,对我国纺织品出口退税政策的主要经济效应进行了模拟分析。结果表明,提高纺织品出口退税率将使我国纺织品的产出、出口以及行业生产者的福利都有所增加,而纺织品内销量有所减少以及消费者的福利受损。     

Regionalism in the nineties: what effect on trade?

We apply a gravity model to 1980–1996 annual nonfuel imports data for 58 countries to quantify the effects of recently created or revamped PTAs on trade. We modify the gravity equation to identify separate effects of PTAs on intrabloc trade, members’ total imports and their total exports and to test for significant changes in trade patterns following the creation of trade blocs. We find no indication that ‘new regionalism’ boosted intrabloc trade significantly and we find trade diversion only for the EU and EFTA. The latter also exhibit ‘export diversion’, which could indicate their imposing welfare costs on other countries. Latin American trade liberalization in the 1990s had a positive impact on bloc members’ imports and, usually, exports.     

Financial development and financial liberalization in Asia: Thresholds,institutions and the sequence of liberalization

This paper investigates whether financial openness leads to financial development after controlling for the level of legal/institutional development, and whether trade opening is a precondition for financial opening. The focus is on Asia. In a panel encompassing 87 less developed countries over the period 1980 to 2000, a higher level of financial openness is found to spur equity market development only if a threshold level of legal development has been attained, a condition which tends to prevail particularly among emerging market Asian countries. On the issue of sequencing, trade openness is found to be a prerequisite for successful inducement of financial development via capital account liberalization.     

Does economic liberalization promote economic growth in Pakistan? An empirical analysis

The study aims to examine the short and long term impacts of economic liberalization on economic growth in case of Pakistan from 1971 to 2011. Economic liberalization consists of reforms in both trade liberalization and financial liberalization. This study contributes to the existing literature by constructing an economic liberalization index using principal component analysis. Our results show, firstly, that economic liberalization reforms have a positive impact on economic growth in the short run. However, trade liberalization is negatively associated with economic growth in the long-run. Secondly, the estimated coefficients through rolling window show that impact of economic liberalization on real GDP is unstable during the selected period of sample. This study recommends to policy makers to enhance human capital by having more expenditure on education sector. In addition, financial reforms by way of a sectoral credit allocation should be introduced to further promote the economic growth.     

Spatial and sectoral characteristics of China’s international and interregional virtual water flows – based on multi-regional input–output model

This paper provides a systematic analysis of spatial and sectoral characteristics and changes in virtual water flows associated with China’s interregional and international trade based on the China interregional input–output tables of 2002 and 2007. The results show significant improvement in water use efficiency between 2002 and 2007. However, the general spatial patterns and sectoral components of virtual water flows have more or less remained during the period. Almost all Chinese provinces are net exporters of virtual water in international trade. In interregional trade, the dominant direction of virtual water flow is from peripheral provinces to eastern coastal provinces. The agricultural sector plays an important role in shaping this direction and has significant impacts on water uses in exporting provinces, some of which are water scarce. The results of this study clarify some confusions concerning mismatches between regional water endowments and virtual water trade within China and with other countries.     

TRADE DIVERSIFICATION,INCOME, AND GROWTH: WHAT DO WE KNOW?

This paper surveys the empirical literature on export and import diversification and its linkages with growth. We review widely used measures of diversification and the evidence about their evolution focusing on how export diversification relates to trade liberalization and economic development. We also discuss the linkages between trade diversification and productivity at the firm and industry level, highlighting new advances on the linkages between import diversification and productivity.     

A micro-level insight on trade-induced job polarization and poverty in Russia

The effect of trade liberalization on workers with different skill levels at distinct types of firms is often surmised to be heterogeneous. This paper employs a longitudinal individual-level dataset—the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS)—to study the impact of trade liberalization on the relative poverty of various groups of workers in Russia. More specifically, we use the country’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a quasi-natural experiment to analyze the impact of trade liberalization on workers at different skill levels and types of firms. Our analysis reveals significant trade-induced job polarization, meaning that, in the tradable sector, even though employment and wages are increasing for low-wage and the high-wage occupations, they are shrinking for mid-wage occupations, leading to a higher poverty rate for workers seeking employment in mid-wage occupations in that sector. Our results are robust to a battery of robustness checks, and they point to the crucial role of state-owned enterprises in attenuating the adverse effects of trade shocks on the welfare of workers.     

中国与金砖国家间农产品贸易成本弹性测度与分析

本文在Novy(2013)超越对数引力模型基础上把国内民主化程度作为政治因素从出口国和进口国两条路径引入该模型对其进行改进,并利用改进后的模型对中国与金砖国家部分农产品贸易成本弹性分别进行测度。结果显示中国与金砖国家农产品贸易成本弹性均为正,中国与金砖国家通过降低贸易成本均可提高贸易量。然而中国出口与进口贸易成本弹性差值均为负,中国总体不具有相对优势。从细分产品结构来看,中国可以优先考虑本国优势产品,重点在优势产品领域积极推进贸易自由化和便利化。中国与金砖国家存在产业内贸易潜力较大产品,中国可以与金砖国家在不同层次加深农业分工与合作,分散中国农产品贸易风险,实现对外贸易多元化和可持续发展。     

Offshoring,globalization, and welfare

We investigate the issue of offshoring in a general-equilibrium model of two countries and one sector of increasing returns to scale. Our model uncovers that offshoring occurs and endogenously evolves in a bell-shaped pattern when trade costs decline, explaining some stylized facts in developed countries. Furthermore, this simple framework can be applied to examine the welfare issue. We find that a fall in offshoring costs benefits the high-wage country but hurts the low-wage country. On the other hand, the low-wage country benefits with trade liberalization. The impact of falling trade costs on the welfare of the high-wage country depends on the values of offshoring freeness.     

Financial liberalization and firms’ capital structure adjustments evidence from Southeast Asia and South America

This paper investigates the impact of financial liberalization on the adjustment of debt ratios in 12 emerging markets using firm-level data from 1991 to 2004. The results support the central hypothesis of this paper that adjustment costs are important in explaining firms’ adjustment toward their debt ratio targets. Our results show that deviations from targets are halved within 1.09 years in South America and 1.19 years in Southeast Asia, suggesting speed of adjustment is relatively faster in South American countries than Southeast Asian countries. Furthermore, our results show that after full liberalization those countries where rule of law and creditors rights were properly enforced, firms had higher adjustment speed compared to those countries where such enforcement was not present.The estimated adjustment coefficients imply that on average firms’ adjustment speeds have increased in all South American countries over the period of financial liberalization. On the contrary, firms’ adjustment speeds did not increase in Southeast Asian countries, reflecting the uneven effect of liberalization on the firms’ financing behaviour in Asian countries. There was a significant reduction in time (in years) taken to half the gap between actual debt ratios and targets only in Pakistan and South Korea. This finding supports the idea of uncertain impact of financial liberalization programs on the domestic financial markets in those emerging markets which started opening up their market and integrating with the rest of the world latter than others. These findings have significant implications for the sequence of banking sector liberalization in the emerging markets.     

低碳贸易下中国出口竞争力刍议

发展低碳经济是人类可持续发展的要求,低碳约束可以通过国际贸易在各国传递,类似"碳标签"、"碳关税"等制度都将可能成为新的国际贸易壁垒,因此,低碳将成为衡量一国出口竞争力的重要指标。本文编制了综合行业能源消费表,采用投入产出法,比较了各主要贸易国的碳生产率水平,测算了我国出口行业碳生产率水平及变化特征。在此基础上,对碳生产率与出口增长进行格兰杰因果检验。最后,就低碳约束下提高出口竞争力提出建议。     

贸易结构与就业结构:基于中国工业部门的分析

随着我国经济发展和改革开放,贸易结构不断变动,对就业水平和就业结构都可能产生重要影响。本文系统研究了我国工业制成品贸易结构变动的就业效应:首先建立了一个简明的理论框架,探讨贸易结构变动对就业结构的影响;然后运用投入产出法和偏差分解法对我国1993～2007年工业制成品贸易结构变化的就业效应进行经验分析。结果表明,研究期间内偏向资本技术密集型产品的贸易结构变动不利于就业,并导致我国的就业结构偏向熟练劳动。     

贸易开放对中国创业的影响机制及其效应

本文利用2002—2014年中国31个省级区域的相关数据,研究贸易开放对创业的影响机制与效应。研究结果表明,贸易开放可以显著地促进中国创业的产生,并且与出口贸易相比,进口贸易开放对创业的正向影响作用更大。此外,市场化程度以及技术创新是贸易开放促进中国创业的重要影响机制。本文还通过工具变量方法有效处理了贸易开放对创业影响机制与效应的内生性问题,纠正了以往研究中未考虑内生性问题而造成估计结果的偏差,实证结果在进行多维度的稳健性检验后仍然成立     

Agricultural Trade Liberalization in a Computable General Equilibrium Framework for the Philippines

A bi-regional and multi-market computable general equilibrium model that focuses on the agricultural sector of the Philippines' economy in 1987 is constructed. This paper presents the basic structure of the model and carries out some cost-benefit analyses to assess the impact of alternative trade reform policies on the economy. It is found that various liberalization policies can produce large benefits, but any single policy implemented separately may incur intolerable costs. However, a combination of trade liberalization and currency devaluation, coupled with target income support and income tax reform, can achieve balanced results that are beneficial to the economy without worsening income distribution and food consumption of the poor.     

区域物流发展水平与进出口贸易关系的实证研究——基于河南省1978-2010年数据的协整分析和Granger因果检验

从供给和需求两个视角选取物流业发展水平的评价指标,对河南省物流业发展水平与进出口贸易增长关系进行了计量分析。通过Johansen协整检验得出:河南省物流业的供给和需求水平与进出口贸易之间存在长期稳定的协整关系;通过Granger因果检验得出:河南省物流业需求水平对进出口贸易有显著的影响,而物流业供给水平对进出口贸易影响不显著,物流业总体发展水平与进出口贸易之间未呈现良性互动态势。