Do South‐South trade agreements increase trade? Commodity‐level evidence from COMESA

Abstract .  South-South trade agreements are proliferating. Yet the impact of these agreements is largely unknown, as existing North-North and North-South micro-level studies are likely to yield misleading predictions for South-South trade agreements. This paper estimates the impact of COMESA on Uganda's imports between 1994 and 2003. Detailed import and tariff data at the 6-digit Harmonized System level are used for more than 1,000 commodities. Based on a difference-in-difference estimation strategy, the paper finds that – in contrast to evidence from aggregate statistics – COMESA's preferential tariff liberalization has not considerably increased Uganda's trade with member countries, on average, across sectors. The effect, however, is heterogeneous across sectors. Finally, the paper finds no evidence of trade-diversion effects.     

Trade Agreements and Trade Opportunities: A Flexible Approach for Modeling Australian Export and Import Elasticities

Patterns of trade have changed enormously over the last 30 years, particularly due to the economic emergence of several Asian countries. With the increasing international tendency for bilateral preferential trade agreements, it is important for countries to be aware of trade substitution possibilities. This paper estimates import and export price elasticities for Australia and its major trading partners in Europe and Asia, 1958 to 2002, using a fully flexible version of the Symmetric Normalized Quadratic aggregator function. Imports and exports are disaggregated into six regions, covering 17 countries. Our results illuminate the (changing) substitution and complementarity patterns for Australian foreign trade, highlighting trading opportunities in the face of a changing international environment.     

The demand for imports: Estimates of bilateral trade flows

This paper provides estimates, using a traditional import demand model, of the demand for imports on a bilateral basis among nine industrialized nations. These estimates provide greater detail about price and income elasticities, but in general are consistent with earlier, aggregate import demand studies with respect to conclusions about the effects of secular and cyclical income changes on trade balances and whether sufficiently high price elasticities are present to insure that the Marshall-Lerner stability condition is met.     

Trade Performances, Product Quality Perceptions, and the Estimation of Trade Price Elasticities

Traditional trade models ignoring the dimension of product quality generally lead to excessively low trade price elasticities. This paper estimates import market share equations including a quality image proxy derived from survey data. The estimation results, based on panel data for the four main EU member states, confirm the part played by product quality perceptions in the estimation of trade price elasticities, at least for highly differentiated products. Introducing the quality image proxy into the models leads to a significant increase in the price elasticities, which thus become superior to unity, in conformity with theoretical elasticities of substitution.     

中国外贸产业结构变迁与国际竞争力演化的经验分析

通过采用1978-2009年联合国Comtrade数据库中按照三、四位数分类的中国进出口贸易数据和国家统计局《中国高技术产业统计分类》中的数据,以国际竞争力指数来代指外贸产业的竞争力状态,并用其时间序列在不同产业中的变化来刻画改革开放30多年来中国贸易产业结构的发展轨迹和国际竞争力走向。研究结果表明,中国外贸产业结构渐趋优化,国际竞争力在逐渐提升。从总体上看,劳动密集型产业竞争力优势仍将保持,资本密集型产业竞争力有所提升,但在高新技术领域中具有较强竞争力的行业很少。中国在从贸易大国向贸易强国转变过程中仍需进一步提升外贸产业的国际竞争力。     

人民币升值能解决美国对华贸易赤字吗?——基于1994～2005年间月度数据的贸易弹性分析

文章以1994年1月到2005年3月的月度数据为样本,用ARDL框架下的协整方法,对中美贸易的收入弹性和实际汇率弹性进行了经验分析。分析后发现:第一,我国对美进出口的收入弹性都是显著的,并且我国对美国出口的收入弹性约为我国从美进口的收入弹性的6倍,但是我国对美进口和出口的实际汇率弹性都是不显著的。因此,文章认为人民币汇率对中美贸易没有显著影响,人民币汇率升值将无法改善美国的对华贸易收支。     

Has the Euro increased international price elasticities?

The introduction of the Euro has been accompanied by the hope that international competition between EMU member states would increase due to higher price transparency. This paper contributes to the literature by analyzing price elasticities in international trade flows between Germany and France and between Germany and the United Kingdom before and after the introduction of the Euro. Using disaggregated Eurostat trade statistics, we adopt a heterogeneous dynamic panel framework for the estimation of price elasticities. We suggest a Kalman-filter approach to control for unobservable quality changes which otherwise would bias estimates of price elasticities. We divide the complete sample, which ranges from 1995 to 2008, into two sub-samples and show that price elasticities in trade between EMU members did not change substantially after the introduction of the Euro. Hence, we do not find evidence for an increase in international price competition resulting from EMU.     

TRADE CREATION AND DIVERSION EFFECTS OF THE U.S.-CANADIAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT

This study empirically estimates and evaluates the economic benefits of the U.S. and Canadian Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Most past studies rely on aggregate data. The analysis here emphasizes the trade effects of removing tariff and nontariff barriers on each commodity group classified by the Standard International Trade Classification. Estimating the amount of trade expansion under FTA for both countries involves using the import demand elasticities from a dynamic demand model. Results show that U.S. imports from Canada are more sensitive to domestic, import, and world prices than are Canadian imports from the United States. U.S. imports from Canada would increase roughly £3.257 billion compared to the £2.432 billion increase for Canadian imports from the United States .     

Estimating Income and Price Elasticities of Trade in a Cointegration Framework

This paper presents further evidence on the empirical regularity known as the "45-degree rule." Income and price elasticities of trade are estimated for 21 countries in a cointegration framework. More specifically, the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) modeling approach and the DOLS procedure are adopted to estimate the long-run structure. The empirical results confirm the existence of a systematic relationship between growth rates and income elasticity estimates: faster growing economies have high income elasticities of demand for their exports but lower import elasticities, which implies that faster growth can be observed without any marked secular trend in real exchange rates.     

Cointegration Approach to Estimating Bilateral Trade Elasticities Between U.S. and Her Trading Partners

Almost all previous authors who estimated the trade elasticities relied upon aggregate trade data. To avoid the aggregation bias, this paper provides estimates of trade elasticities using bilateral data between the United States and her six largest trading partners. Application of cointegration analysis reveals that in many cases, bilateral trade elasticities are large enough to justify real depreciation of the dollar as a mean of improving U.S. trade balance.[F14]     

Economic determinants of Soviet foreign trade with Eastern Europe

Using a cross-sectionally correlated and time-wise autoregressive pooling procedure, we have obtained long-run estimates of export and import elasticities of Soviet-East European bilateral trade with respect to supply, demand and trade resistance factors. Our results indicate that Soviet exports to East Europe during 1963–1973 was, for most product groups, determined by demand conditions found in the East European partner countries while Soviet imports from Eastern Europe, for the same period, was for most product groups determined by East European supplies.     

Trade elasticity of substitution and equilibrium dynamics

The empirical literature provides a wide range of estimates for trade elasticities at the aggregate level. Recent contributions in international macroeconomics suggest that low (implied) values of the trade elasticity may play an important role in understanding the disconnect between international prices and real variables. However, a standard model of the international business cycle displays multiple locally isolated equilibria if the trade is sufficiently low. The main contribution of this paper is to compute and characterize some dynamic properties of these equilibria. In simulations, the presence of multiple equilibria is shown to imply a volatile and persistent real exchange rate.     

A differential approach to U.S. import demand

We apply the differential production theory approach to U.S. import data (1921-70) without imposing restrictions on Divisia elasticities. The estimates of these elasticities are 0.58 for the imports of foods, 0.95 for those of crude materials, 1.34 for semi-manufactures, and 1.16 for finished manufactures.     

COMPETITIVE NEED LIMITS AND THE U.S. GENERALIZED SYSTEM OF PREFERENCE

The United States uses competitive need limits to deny Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) treatment of imports from developing countries. The analysis here estimates in two ways the effect of competitive need limits on GSP imports. First, it uses ex post trade data to determine the effect on import values and shares. Second, it combines an ex ante model with trade and elasticity data to estimate the effect of competitive need limits. Results indicate that competitive need limits reduce affected imports by 10 to 17%. Benefits from this import reduction accrue almost exclusively to U.S. import competing firms.     

CHALLENGES FOR FRANCE IN THE EMERGING INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENT: A DYNAMIC ANALYSIS

France faces substantial challenges as the economic integration of Europe and the international economy continues. This article uses a dynamic aggregate translog cost function with inputs of capital, labor, and imports to examine the likely impact of closer world economic ties on France. This technique allows one to estimate short- as well as long-run direct price elasticities of demand for the inputs and cross-price elasticities for each respective input pair. The findings of the article include that (1) the French economy is becoming more sensitive to changes in import prices and (2) all the inputs are substitutes for one another. These results suggest that continuing international economic integration will present substantial challenges to the French economy. The short-run estimates of direct and cross-price elasticities are consistent with the Le Châtelier principle, except for the cross-price elasticities between capital and labor. Some possible reasons for the latter result are discussed in the article. (JEL F14, O10, O12)     

Robinson and Marshall-Lerner conditions with positive import content of exports

The usual Robinson and Marshall-Lerner conditions were derived under the assumption that exports are produced with domestic resources only. If, however, one takes into consideration that the ‘import content of exports’ is positive, the export price elasticities in the Robinson and Marshall-Lerner conditions have to be corrected accordingly. This correction factor is larger for smaller countries, because they are more intensely engaged in international trade.     

LIML estimation of import demand and export supply elasticities

I apply limited-information maximum likelihood (LIML) to estimate import demand and export supply elasticities for a range of eurozone countries. The results highlight inconsistencies in the parameters estimated by LIML relative to an estimator that is robust to heteroskedasticity. The nature of the structural equations reveals complications generated by the limiting behavior of the parameters that can be replicated in finite samples. The results of simulations underscore improvements in parameter estimates in a three-dimensional panel, suggesting that the problem of limiting behaviour can be overcome in larger dataset/panels.     

知识产权政策的进口贸易效应:扩张或垄断?——基于中国高技术产品进口贸易的实证研究

文章基于综合考虑双边与多边贸易阻力的最新引力模型,采用Lall与OECD两种高技术产品分类统计方法,利用我国双边贸易的SITC五位编码进口产品数据,在控制经济环境、人文制度等因素的基础上考察了知识产权保护对我国高技术产品进口的影响。结果表明,知识产权保护作为一种非贸易的制度安排,在一定程度上促进了我国高技术产品的进口,其市场扩张效应大于市场垄断效应,但经济发展水平、市场规模等经济环境因素仍是促进我国高技术产品进口的主要原因。     

European Integration and Production in the French Economy

Effects of greater European integration on the French economy are explored with an aggregate cost function. Input direct price elasticities are inelastic, but greatest (absolute value) for capital and lowest for imports. Cross-price elasticities suggest inputs are substitutes and are higher for domestic inputs than domestic input and imports pairs. As trade restrictions fall, effects on domestic input demand may increase as substitution elasticities rise. Inverse output supply price elasticities indicate domestic input prices are relatively important factors affecting consumption goods prices and import prices more important for investment goods. Thus, import price decreases may stimulate investment and growth. (JEL F14 , O10 , O12 )     

The US Current Account, New Economy Services, and Implications for Sustainability

The paper considers the implications for sustainability of the US current account of widespread uptake of New Economy services around the world. The main contribution is to estimate new income elasticities for international trade in New Economy services and incorporate these in a simple model of the current accounts. Widespread uptake of New Economy services around the world improves the potential for a sustainable US external balance through two channels. First, uptake of New Economy services raises global growth. Second, it narrows the asymmetry in income elasticity of US trade. But, reasonable estimates of these two structural improvements are not sufficient to stabilize the US current account deficit.