Managerial Incentives and Heterogeneous Firms

An industry where managerial firms and entrepreneurial firms coexist is considered. We analyze the effects of increasing competitiveness, defined by the increase in the number of managerial firms, on the equilibrium managerial incentive scheme. Our analysis shows that an increase in the number of managerial firms would induce a managerial firm to tie the incentives more closely to profits. We also compare the equilibrium with the regular Cournot model.     

Taxation of Foreign Profits with Heterogeneous Multinational Firms

This paper analyses optimal taxation of foreign profits using a model with heterogeneous multinational firms that serve a foreign market through exports or foreign direct investment (FDI). If a firm switches from exporting to FDI, domestic activity and tax payments may decrease, stay constant or even rise because of intra‐firm trade. It turns out that, in contrast to recent claims, in all three cases, the optimal tax system implies full taxation after deduction of foreign tax payments. If the country accounts for the effects of its policy on the foreign price level, the case for taxing foreign income becomes even stronger. However, the globally optimal tax system may require exemption of foreign income from tax.     

Globalisation and Corruption,Revisited

This paper presents new empirical evidence on the determinants of corruption, focussing on the role of globalisation and inequality. The estimates for a panel of 102 countries over the period 1995–2005 point to three main results: (i) Detection technologies, reflected in a high level of development, human capital and political rights reduce corruption, whereas natural resource rents increase corruption; (ii) Globalisation (in terms of both trade and financial openness) has a negative effect on corruption, which is more pronounced in developing countries; (iii) Inequality increases corruption, and once the role of inequality is accounted for, the impact of globalisation on corruption is halved. In line with recent theory, this suggests that globalisation – besides reducing corruption through enhanced competition – affects corruption also by reducing inequality.     

Globalisation,Growth and Convergence

This paper, devoted to the study of globalisation, analyses two distinct but closely related issues: First, it aims at evaluating disparities in the degree of globalisation observed in a sample of 101 countries over the period 1970–2005. Second, the paper tries to shed some light to the much debated issue of whether globalisation affects economic growth and, in so doing, whether convergence in globalisation brings about convergence in per capita income. The results obtained are both encouraging: on the one side, as it is shown that there has been a clear process of globalisation convergence; on the other, the paper concludes that globalisation has been one of the main drivers of economic growth, thus fostering convergence in per capita income.     

异质性服务企业、风险承担与开放经济下二元市场结构演变

本文将服务企业特性和风险承担因素引入异质性企业贸易理论的分析框架中,考察了发展中国家不同风险承担的服务企业在国内与国外二元市场结构上的演变机制及效应。结果表明:风险承担较高的服务企业呈现出由国内转向国外的二元市场结构演变效应,而风险承担较低的服务企业呈现出相反效应;演变机制是生产环节资本性支出的增加和营销环节贸易成本及风险的有效克服;与制造业企业的比较显示,由于外资型加工贸易企业和小型外贸企业的存在,使得不同风险承担的制造业企业在二元市场结构上的演变效应与服务企业截然相反,但演变机制与服务企业是一致的。本文研究为发展中国家促进服务业发展和扩大服务出口提供了企业风险承担视角下的政策启示。     

贸易成本、技术选择和外资出口企业转型——基于异质性企业贸易理论的视角

外资企业在我国加工贸易企业中占大多数.通过将异质性外资企业的转型决策引入标准异质性企业贸易模型,本文从贸易成本角度阐释了异质性外商投资企业技术选择的理论机制,模型表明:过度的可变贸易成本补贴会减小低效率企业转型激励,而适度的研发补贴却能鼓励外资企业转型升级.利用中国工业企业层面数据,研究发现,在控制了企业资本劳动比的情形下,外资出口企业中出口密集度较大的企业、加工贸易出口企业以及投资于劳动密集型行业的企业技术水平较低.通过支付更多的固定成本,外资企业能够通过使用高端技术进行出口转型.该检验结果与模型预测保持一致.本文的政策含义在于,政府应该控制对外资出口企业的可变成本优惠,补贴外资出口企业的固定研发成本,培育高质量的人力资本以提高利用外资的综合优势,辅助外资出口企业转型.     

投资经验是否影响了中国异质性企业的OFDI模式选择

本文研究了中国异质性企业在特定目的国①市场的前期投资经验与其后续OFDI模式选择的动态关系,并提出相关假说,然后使用2003—2011年中国企业OFDI数据进行了实证检验与分析。研究发现:对特定目的国市场前期投资经验越丰富,或者中国其他企业对目的国对行业投资经验越丰富,中国OFDI企业越倾向于跨境并购;从企业异质性影响看,当中国企业生产率越高时,该企业在目的国投资经验对其OFDI模式选择的影响也越大;企业前期投资经验与目的国制度、风险环境之间呈显著的逆向调节效应,差异性地作用于该企业后期OFDI模式选择;当然,中国OFDI企业在同一国前期的投资经验对其后期OFDI模式选择的影响强于相似国家,而非相似国家的投资经验则不具有显著影响。     

China and Globalisation

Since the initiation of economic reforms in 1978 China has become one of the world’s fastest growing economies and has emerged as a global economic and trade power. What are the implications for the world economy, in particular for the distribution of income and wealth? How will China contribute to shaping not only the globalised world economy but also the institutions and policies of global governance?The authors wish to thank the participants of the international seminar in Shanghai on 18-20 March 2005 for their valuable contributions, which have been incorporated into this paper.     

Governance and Globalisation

Unlike the large literature on ‘democracy and trade’, there is a much smaller literature on the effect of the level of democracy in a nation on the level of its foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow. These few studies reveal mixed empirical results, and surprisingly only one study has examined bilateral FDI flows. Moreover, few of these studies use multiple governance indicators separating the ‘pluralism’ effect of democratic institutions from the ‘good governance’ effect, there are no studies on democratic institutions’ various effects on the level of FDI relative to trade, and there are no studies of democratic institutions’ various effects on the selection of countries into FDI. We focus on three contributions. First, we examine the simultaneous effects of the World Bank's (six) Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGIs) – which allow separating the effects of pluralism from those of five other good governance measures – on bilateral trade, FDI and FDI relative to trade using state‐of‐the‐art gravity specifications. Second, we find strong evidence that – after accounting for host governments’ effectiveness in various roles of good governance – a higher level of pluralism as measured by the WGIs’ Voice and Accountability Index reduces trade levels, likely by increasing the ‘voice’ of more protectionist less‐skilled workers, but not FDI levels. Moreover, we find qualitatively different effects of other WGIs – such as political stability – on trade versus FDI flows. Third, we account for firm heterogeneity alongside a large number of zeros in bilateral FDI flows using recent advances in gravity modelling. We distinguish between the (country) intensive and extensive margins and show that pluralism affects FDI inflows negatively at the intensive margin, but positively at the extensive margin.     

Globalisation and Obesity

The WHO has recently announced the global obesity epidemic. An economic model is developed in which globalisation factors generate health externalities and contribute to global obesity growth. The unbalanced panel data set contains the information for 79 countries over the period 1986–2008. Fixed‐effects panel data estimation and quantile regression analysis were used to analyse the data. The fixed‐effects panel model results indicate that the impact of trade openness and the globalisation social index (GSI) on global obesity rates is positive and significant, which is consistent with prior expectations, while surprisingly the foreign direct investments (FDI) has no impact on global obesity. While these results are interesting, they are hiding the effect of globalisation processes across the conditional distribution of the obesity variable. The use of quantile regression uncovered that the impact of the FDI and the GSI on low and average quantiles (low and average obesity rates in our sample) is positive and significant, while high quantiles are not affected. Since low and average quantiles (low and average obesity rates) are representative of the less‐ and medium‐developed countries, this result implies that social globalisation and FDI adversely impact obesity in less‐to‐medium developed countries. Trade openness generally has no impact on changes in obesity rates across quantiles.     

Globalisation,Women's Economic Rights and Forced Labour

Globalisation critics are concerned that increased trade openness and foreign direct investment exacerbate existing economic disadvantages of women and foster conditions for forced labour. Defenders of globalisation argue instead that as countries become more open and competition intensifies, discrimination against any group, including women, becomes more difficult to sustain and is therefore likely to recede. The same is argued with respect to forced labour. This article puts these competing claims to an empirical test. We find that countries that are more open to trade provide better economic rights to women and have a lower incidence of forced labour. This effect holds in a global sample as well as in a developing country sub‐sample and holds also when potential feedback effects are controlled via instrumental variable regression. The extent of an economy's ‘penetration’ by foreign direct investment by and large has no statistically significant impact. Globalisation might weaken the general bargaining position of labour such that outcome‐related labour standards might suffer. However, being more open toward trade is likely to promote rather than hinder the realisation of two labour rights considered as core or fundamental by the International Labour Organisation, namely the elimination of economic discrimination and of forced labour.     

异质性OFDI企业序贯投资存在区位选择的“路径依赖”吗

本文基于2000-2010年《中国工业企业数据库》与《境外投资企业(机构)名录》的匹配数据,以中国464家进行序贯投资的OFDI企业为研究对象,利用条件Logit模型考察其在区位选择中对以往投资经验的动态依赖情况。结果发现,中国OFDI企业在序贯投资时确实存在对以往经验的路径依赖特征,且依赖程度依次为相同市场投资经验、相似市场投资经验与同行业企业投资经验。但是,根据企业在规模、生产率和所有权属性的异质性进行分组检验后,发现不同类型企业对不同投资经验的依赖情况亦有所差异:大规模和高生产率企业对自身投资经验的路径依赖较强,并倾向于选择相同和相似市场进行序贯投资;国有企业对相似市场与同行业企业投资经验的路径依赖程度明显高于三资企业和私营企业。     

Globalisation,inequality and redistribution: Theory and evidence

This paper constructs a simple theoretical model to study the implications of globalisation for inequality and redistribution. It shows that when globalisation increases inequality, a policymaker interested in maximising the sum of welfares of all agents increases redistribution. Empirically, the paper examines the effects of globalisation on inequality and redistribution in a panel data set of 140 countries for the period from 1970 to 2012. It finds that both inequality and redistribution have been increasing with globalisation. The results are robust to the inclusion of many different controls and the exclusion of outliers.     

Globalisation,trade, and growth: A macroeconomic perspective

On the basis of economic theory, what effects can globalisation be expected to have on trade and growth? Does the empirical evidence support this? What developments will the next phase of globalisation bring?     

Globalisation, internal labour markets and the migration of the highly skilled

Over the last decade highly skilled migration has been gaining relative importance in European migration flows. Following the goods and factor markets the market for highly skilled labour has thus also started to globalise. How are the globalisation processes of the world-wide goods, capital and labour markets interlinked? What role do international enterprises and their internal labour markets play in increasing highly skilled migration? What trends can be expected for the future?     

Globalisation and the competitiveness of regional blocs

Both globalisation and regionalisation have gained momentum in the last two decades in every part of the world, involving economies at all levels of development. The following article examines the major determinants affecting the competitive position of selected regional blocs and suggests some policy stances which promise to support both further regional integration and improved competitiveness at a global level.