Endowment Differences and the Composition of Intra‐Industry Trade

The empirical relationship between differences in endowments and different types of trade is investigated in this paper. Although net trade (NT) and vertical intra‐industry trade (IIT) are both broadly viewed as reflecting endowment differences, we suggest that there will be systematic differences in the way their shares of trade adjust as endowment differences become larger. Empirical evidence for European Union trade with its 52 major trading partners confirms this. The share of horizontal IIT (net trade) decreases (increases) for all increases in absolute endowment differences, but the share of vertical IIT can both increase and decrease with increases in endowment differences.     

The Role of Trade in Intra‐Industry Productivity Growth—the Case of Old and New European Union Countries

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the role of trade in productivity growth in a sample of 30 sectors in 25 EU countries in the period of rapid East–West integration (1995–2007). Shift‐share analysis is used to show that changes in value added per hour worked in these countries appear to be mainly due to positive developments (rising productivity) within single industries and only to a lower extent result from a shift towards higher productivity activities. Trade is found to be an important positive determinant of intra‐industry productivity growth in European countries. Exports and imports alike can be associated with efficiency gains, but intermediate good exchange and trade with New Member States exert a particularly strong influence on intra‐industry productivity growth in the EU.     

Intra-industry Trade and Innovation: An empirical study of the Colombian manufacturing industry

This paper analyses the theoretical and empirical relationship between intra-industry trade (IIT) flows in manufactures and technical change for the Colombian manufacturing industry during the 1970-95 period. A general estimating equation for the sources of change of the equilibrium number of varieties, in which TFP growth is one of its components, is derived from the basic model of trade in differentiated goods with monopolistic competition. Based on that relationship, several estimations on the determinants of IIT flows are carried out. The econometric set up follows a panel data and cross-section estimations of system of simultaneous equations. TFP and IIT indices are the endogenous variables of the system with industry characteristic, trade policy, and innovation-activity variables as the set of exogenous variables. The paper also presents a comparative analysis in the direction and trends of Colombia's IIT flows in manufactures with the Group of Seven, NAFTA, and the Latin American Free Trade area members (LAFTA) since 1974.     

Foreign Trade Patterns Between Estonia and the EU

In this paper, we focus on the development of the foreign trade flows between Estonia and the EU. We observe rapid reorientation of the trade flows from the former Soviet Union towards Western markets because of economic reforms and foreign trade liberalization. Moreover, we determine the commodity groups with a comparative advantage in the EU market and analyze its dynamics. Further analysis of the intra-industry trade (ITT) shows that vertical IIT plays a dominant role in Estonian-EU IIT flows. Shares of total, vertical, and horizontal IIT have grown rapidly since 2004, the year of accession to the EU.     

The Role of Migration in the Variety and Quality of Trade: Evidence from Germany

We explore the migration‐trade nexus in the case of Germany over the period 2000–09, disentangling the two dimensions of intra‐industry trade (vertical and horizontal). We find that immigration is positively and significantly related to intra‐industry trade. However, the magnitude and statistical significance of migration's impact on trade are considerably higher for horizontal intra‐industry trade and increase with the difference in the level of development between Germany and the partner countries. This pattern is consistent with the view that information flows between migrant communities and their country of origin may be more important for consumer goods (where trade in varieties prevails) and that this information effect is more important if trading countries are very different.     

Intra‐industry Trade Liberalization: Why Skilled Workers are More Likely to Support Free Trade

This paper presents a theoretical model and empirical analysis that connects the prevalence of intra‐industry trade with increased wage inequality from trade liberalization in both skilled and unskilled labor abundant countries. The Stolper–Samuelson effect is incorporated into an intra‐industry trade liberalization (intra‐ITL) hypothesis where skilled labor opposes protectionism in all countries engaged in intra‐industry trade because skilled workers gain at the expense of unskilled workers from multilateral trade liberalization within the skill‐intensive sector. We examine empirical evidence on whether skilled individuals are more supportive of trade liberalization than unskilled individuals across 31 countries with different levels of intra‐industry trade and skill endowments. We find that the extent to which countries engage in intra‐industry trade in high‐tech commodities is strongly linked with the intensity of opposition to protection by skilled labor. Regression results strongly support our hypothesis that skilled workers, almost everywhere, are more likely to support free trade.     

Monopolistic Competition and North–South Trade

This paper examines the consequences of opening to international trade for a developing economy with open urban unemployment and rural–urban migration, where the urban sector is monopolistically competitive. It is shown that there exists a threshold level of urbanization prior to which increases in product variety will be reflected in increased urban unemployment, that opening to intra‐industry trade with a high‐wage economy (i.e. North–South trade) will reduce the rate of urban unemployment by a greater amount than intra‐industry trade with a similar economy, and that trade intervention in the South may lower welfare by reducing varieties produced in the North.     

No risk and some fun? Trade and wages in the enlarged European Union

This paper analyses the relationship between openness to trade and wages at the industry level (15 manufacturing and 6 service industries) in 25 EU countries over the period from 1995 to 2005. By applying a cross-country and industry-specific approach, it is possible to control for unobserved heterogeneity at both country and industry levels. We also differentiate between intra and inter-industry trade and we try to assess the relative importance of foreign wages versus domestic productivity developments in an open environment. We find that trade is not an important driver of wages, since the wage response to trade is small. Moreover, in line with the Stolper-Samuelson reasoning, the overall wage impact is always positive if significant in central and eastern Europe, while in western Europe we often observe a negative response, particularly in resource-based industries. Nevertheless, increased trade reinforces the productivity-wage link and weakens the co-movement of wages in eastern Europe, while there is less evidence of a similar wage-disciplining effect of trade in the west.     

Horizontal and vertical intra-industry trade in Australian manufacturing: does trade liberalization have any impact?

This paper contributes to the literature on intra-industry trade (IIT) by disentangling such trade into horizontally and vertically differentiated products, and investigating their determinants in the context of trade liberalization in Australia. IIT in Australian manufacturing has increased following trade liberalization in 1980s and is increasingly dominated by vertically differentiated products. Industry level evidence confirms that the failure to segregate IIT into horizontally and vertically differentiated products produces misleading results as their determinants differ. Also, structural changes brought about by the policy liberalization appear to have an impact on total as well vertical IIT.     

An assessment of the Europe agreements’ effects on bilateral trade, GDP, and welfare

The so-called Europe Agreements had been enacted in the 1990s to initiate the integration of goods markets between the 15 EU incumbent economies as of 1995 and 10 potential entrants located in Central and Eastern Europe. This paper evaluates the trade, GDP, and welfare effects of these agreements by means of structural analysis of a bilateral trade flow model. The results support three conclusions. First, the agreements exerted significant positive effects on goods trade between the EU15 incumbents and the CEEC and, at the same time, they induced trade redirection from other countries. Second, EU15 GDP responded by an increase of much less than 1% while that in the 10 CEEC increased by several percent in response to the agreements. Third, the effects on welfare were moderate in the EU15 but amounted to more double-digit percentage changes in the involved CEEC.     

Trade barriers,multinational involvement and intra-industry trade: panel data evidence from India

The article analyses the effects of trade barriers and multinationals on the intensity of intra-industry trade (IIT) in a panel of Indian manufacturing industries from 1988 to 1999. We find that the intensity of IIT increases with the reduction of trade barriers. This is expected as greater competition from imports leads individual plants in the domestic industry to specialize in the manufacturing of unique varieties. The analysis suggests that horizontal (market seeking) multinational activities in the domestic industries exert a negative influence on IIT. This is consistent with the view that horizontal multinationals displace exports to the host country. At the same time, our results indicate that IIT will be stimulated to the extent that the entry of multinationals induces intra-industry specialization. We also analyse the role of product differentiation and plant level scale economies in determining IIT.     

Trade liberalization and institutional reforms1

The accession of Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries to the European Union (EU) is expected to lead to the new member countries becoming more like the older members, including in terms of trade. In this paper, we focus on two factors promoting CEE–EU trade integration: trade liberalization and institutional reforms. Measures of trade liberalization undertaken by both parties during the 1990s were very substantial, but did not always produce the expected upsurge of regional trade flows. Much less progress has been made in improving the functioning of CEE institutions (e.g., progress in the privatization process or in reducing corruption). Countries where most important changes at the institutional level occurred were also those that most increased their trade with the EU. Comparing the impact of these two factors, we find that improving institutions in CEE countries can generate as much trade as the removal of all tariff and non‐tariff barriers. The paper also addresses the issue of the presence of reversed causality between trade and institutions, and the pro‐trade effect of institutional similarity.     

Trade Liberalisation, Closer Economic Relations and Intra-Industry Specialisation

Abstract
Much of the growth in trade among the industrialised countries, and more recently among countries in the Asia-Pacific region, has taken the form of intra-industry trade (HT). Australia has historically had one of the lowest shares of IIT among OECD countries. This article examines how Australia's IIT has changed in the 1980s in response to the process of trade liberalisation and completion of the Closer Economic Relations (CER) pact with New Zealand. HT indexes are estimated for Australia's multilateral and trans-Tasman trade for 1981 and 1991 for 132 industries using data at the 3 and 4-digit level of the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC). The results point to a sharp increase in the share of IIT for both multilateral and trans-Tasman trade. Industries that have undergone the largest reductions in protection levels have increased their shares of IIT quite considerably. Increased intra-industry specialisation suggests that the short-run adjustment costs associated with trade liberalisation are likely to be lower. If IIT continues to grow in response to the ongoing process of internationalisation of the Australian economy, then Australia's prospects for expanding its share of world trade are good.     

The Roles of Innovators and Labor in a Schumpeterian Factor Endowments Based Model of Intra‐industry Trade

This paper builds a model of Schumpeterian innovation and trade that emphasizes endowments of innovators and labor as a key factor in determining the pattern of trade. The model suggests a strong complementarity between intra‐industry and inter‐industry trade. The pattern of inter‐industry vs intra‐industry trade is analyzed using the Grubel–Lloyd index. The theoretical model predicts that the prominence of intra‐industry trade is a nonlinear function of the ratio of the proportion of world knowledge domestically generated to the domestic share of the world labor supply. Strong empirical evidence for this key result is presented and implications are discussed.     

Trade, Skills and Adjustment Costs: A Study of Intra-Sectoral Labor Mobility

The relationship between the ability of workers to change job, sector or industry and the short‐run adjustment costs associated with a reallocation of labor is the subject of lively debate among academics. This paper examines recent sector and industry level labor market adjustment in the UK using data from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey. We explore the link between the nature of UK trade patterns and labor adjustment within the manufacturing sector and employ a multinomial logit approach to examine the determinants of “within” and “between” industry mobility. By controlling for individual skill specificity we find some evidence of a link between intra‐industry trade and intra‐industry labor adjustment.     

产业内贸易的结构变动与决定因素——基于中国电子及通讯设备制造业的实证分析

对1996—2005年中国电子及通讯设备制造业产业内贸易的结构、变动及决定因素进行的实证分析显示：中国电子及通讯设备制造业贸易以产业内贸易为主,产业内贸易又以垂直产业内贸易为主,水平产业内贸易贡献不大;加入WTO前后两个阶段产业内贸易及其结构变动呈相反的趋势;要素禀赋结构及其变化是产业内贸易变动的主要因素,而外商直接投资、规模经济和产品差异三个因素的影响很微弱。这表明中国电子及通讯设备制造业扩张的基础是成本优势且主要集中于国际产业链的低端,加入WTO并没有真正改变中国电子及通讯设备制造业的国际分工地位。     

Which commercial partners are important for the most recently admitted EU countries?

This paper describes the degree of trade integration inside the European Union (EU) after the fifth enlargement in 2004. To achieve this goal, we build a database of information on trade flows between the new EU countries (EU‐10) and 180 commercial partners in six different sectors from 1999 to 2011. Using the standard gravity model and estimating a difference‐in‐differences specification, we analyze how joining the EU affected the intensity and direction of the EU‐10's trade flows. Our results show that though trade exchanges between the EU‐10 and EU‐15 intensified after 2004, the impact of integration was much more significant to the EU‐10 group.     

The convergence in domestic value-added of exports in the EU

Difficulties in measuring domestic value-added in exports (DVA) have led to the development of alternative measures of trade in value-added terms. These new measures have enabled more accurate estimates that reveal that the EU countries from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE10) exhibit an approximately five percentage points lower DVA share of exports compared with other EU countries (EU15). The lag is on average the highest in knowledge-intensive manufacturing sectors (eight percentage points) and the lowest in knowledge-intensive services (0.3 percentage points). However, this article argues that the CEE10 economies have acquired new knowledge by participating in GVCs and thus have gradually started increasing their level of DVA. Based on EU trade data, this article presents evidence of convergence of DVA in manufacturing and especially in the services sector. It is also shown that a negative relationship exists between participation in GVCs and DVA in the CEE10 economies that is declining over time in both manufacturing and services exports.     

Non‐discriminatory Trade Policies in Panel Structural Gravity Models: Evidence from Monte Carlo Simulations

This paper provides Monte Carlo (MC) simulation evidence on the performance of methods used for identifying the effects of nondiscriminatory trade policy (NDTP) variables in panel structural gravity models. The benchmarked methods include a fixed effect (FE) estimator that utilizes data on intra national trade flows, the bonus‐vetus (BV) and the two‐stage fixed effect (FE‐2S) estimator. The results indicate that only the FE estimates are unbiased and consistent under very general assumptions of the data generating process. The favourable asymptotic properties of the FE estimator unfold as the number of period T increases.     

Determinants of intra‐firm trade: Evidence from foreign affiliates in Sub‐Saharan Africa

By exploiting a unique sample of foreign affiliates in Sub‐Saharan Africa, we study previously examined and unexamined firm‐level determinants of intra‐firm trade. We document that foreign affiliates engaging in intra‐firm trade are relatively few and that the majority of these also engage in trade at arm's length, which accounts for an important fraction of their total trade. The identified firm‐level determinants of intra‐firm trade are consistent with property rights and intangible asset theories of the multinational firm, with international production hierarchy theories, as well as with theories of complex FDI and of multinational activity under credit constraints.