Globalization,product differentiation,and wage inequality

Abstract This paper develops a two‐country, general equilibrium model of oligopoly in which the degree of horizontal product differentiation is endogenously determined by firms’ strategic investments in product innovation. Consumers seek variety and product innovation is more skill intensive than production. Stronger import competition increases innovation incentives, and thereby the relative demand for skill. An intra‐industry trade expansion following trade liberalization can therefore increase wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers. As long as some industries remain shielded from international competition, the welfare implications of globalization are found to be generally ambiguous.     

关键研发者创造力变化研究综述与未来展望——组织内与组织间嵌入视角

关键研发者为数不多但承担企业大量的核心技术创新工作，是企业最重要的战略人力资源。以往学者基于关键研发者内涵，从各维度提出不同的关键研发者识别方法，探讨影响关键研发者创造力的各种因素，但尚未形成统一认识和系统理论框架。回顾关键研发者内涵，阐述关键研发者识别方法及其异同，提出环境不确定性下影响关键研发者创造力的4个方面:①组织内工作环境变动；②组织间工作环境变动；③组织内合作网络；④组织间合作网络。最后，提出4个未来重要研究方向，为企业在快速变化的市场环境下实现关键研发者管理及促进技术创新提供理论与应用依据。     

Relative wages and trade-induced changes in technology

We develop a model where trade liberalization leads to skill-biased technological change, which in turn raises the relative return to skilled labor. When firms get access to a larger market, the relative profitability of different technologies changes in favor of the more skill-intensive technology. As the composition of firms changes to one with predominantly skill-intensive firms, the relative demand for skilled labor increases. This way, we establish a link between trade, technology and relative returns to skilled and unskilled labor.     

Impact of international trade under dual labor markets

A country's unemployment rate can be affected by technology choice and the opening of international trade. This general equilibrium model examines the impact of international trade with the presence of dual labor markets in which manufacturing firms engage in oligopolistic competition and choose technologies with different marginal and fixed costs to maximize profits. In a closed economy, it is shown that an increase in labor market efficiency or a population increase induces manufacturing firms to adopt more advanced technologies and the wage rate in the manufacturing sector increases. With the existence of a continuum of technologies, technology choice is not a source of firm heterogeneity. The opening of international trade leads to an increase in the wage rate in the manufacturing sector and the price of the agricultural good. When countries are identical, international trade always increases national welfare.     

Rigid labour markets with trade and capital mobility: theory and evidence

Abstract We develop a multi‐country model with imperfect labour markets to study the effect of labour market frictions on bilateral trade flows. We use a framework that allows for goods trade and capital mobility and show that labour market imperfections exert opposite effects in the absence of capital mobility (the short run) and its presence (the long run), respectively. In the short run, a higher degree of labour market rigidity decreases the value of total trade, but increases the share of intra‐industry trade for a country that is larger than its trading partner. The reverse effects are observed when capital is allowed to cross country borders. Using data on unemployment and income distribution for 23 OECD countries, we compute the central parameter in our theoretical model that describes the degree of labour market rigidity. We use this new empirical concept to provide evidence for our theoretical findings by means of reduced‐form regressions as well as simulation results of a calibrated general equilibrium model.     

Endogenous domestic market structure and the effects of a trade cost reduction in a unionised industry

In contrast to the existing partial equilibrium literature considering the effects of a trade cost reduction on unionised wage under a given market structure, we show the effects by determining the domestic market structure endogenously. A lower trade cost reduces the number of active domestic firms, but it increases unionised wage in the active domestic firms under decentralised unions. Although a lower trade cost increases wage in the active domestic firms, it reduces domestic employment and total union utility at the free entry equilibrium. So, a trade cost reduction benefits domestic employed workers by increasing the unionised wage, but its effect on the total domestic workers is not favourable. If there is a centralised union, a lower trade cost reduces the number of active domestic firms, unionised wage, domestic employment and union utility.     

How do prolific inventors impact firm innovation in ICT: implications from patent co-inventing network

Prolific inventors not only own higher innovation productivity, but also impact other inventors through innovation networks. This paper contributes to existing literatures by differentiating prolific inventors from non-prolific inventors in the network context, and making an empirical analysis of the effect of prolific inventors. We use the patent filing data from the State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO) in investigating the effect of prolific inventors on firm innovation. We use the patents filed by 10 largest Information & Communication Technology firms during 1995–2010 and establish the innovation network with patent co-inventing data. The empirical result shows that prolific inventors positively impact their partners who used to co-invent at least one patent with them. Furthermore, prolific inventors positively impact inventors who do not have a close contact with them. The closer the inventors are to prolific inventors, the more patents they produce. Members are thereby more likely to gather around prolific inventors and formulate intensive clusters. In networks centered by prolific inventors, useful knowledge outweighs redundant knowledge, and high clustering that facilitates knowledge flow is proved to be beneficial; while in networks without prolific inventors, high clustering may not be beneficial as there are less inventors holding advanced knowledge. Policy implications are discussed at the end of this study.     

International trade and competitiveness

We analyze the role of international market size differences in determining the investment in process R&D (and thus firms?? competitiveness) in a trade model with oligopolistic market structure, non-homothetic production technology and costly trade. We show that the R&D effort is higher (or even disproportionately so) for firms in the larger market, which causes endogenous asymmetries across countries. As a result, firms in the larger market have higher competitiveness, which increases their market shares in international markets. Furthermore, and contrary to what is predicted by Krugman (Am Econ Rev 70:950?C959, 1980) ??home market effect??, in equilibrium the larger country does not need to host a disproportionately higher share of the world??s industry than of the world??s demand. Despite this, the larger country can still continue to run a trade surplus in the oligopolistic sector, since it hosts firms with higher competitiveness than firms in the smaller country.     

Goods market responses to trade shocks and trade and wages decompositions

Abstract.  Trade and wages literature asks whether trade or technology has been the major factor behind increases in wage inequality in OECD countries since the 1980s. In this literature, little attention has been paid to how goods market responses to trade shocks affect conclusions. Using an Armington heterogeneous goods trade model we capture demand side effects, and show how trade shocks affecting the price of unskilled‐intensive importable goods can be absorbed on the demand side of goods markets, with little or no impact on relative wage rates. No wage impact occurs if the elasticity of substitution in preferences between imports and import substitutes is one. As this elasticity increases, trade plays an ever larger role in explaining wage inequality changes, and as the elasticity goes below one the sign of the effect changes. We present some results of general equilibrium decompositions of total wage change into trade and technology components using UK data. We suggest that since many import demand elasticity estimates are in the neighbourhood of one, there is a prima facie case that goods market considerations further lower the significance of trade as an explanation of recent trends in OECD wage inequality beyond that claimed in the literature.     

Endogenous trading bloc formation in a North-South global economy

Abstract .  The majority of the trading blocs to date are between similar countries, rather than between developed and developing countries. This paper provides a rationale for why trading blocs among similar countries may arise as an equilibrium phenomenon. It develops a model of an asymmetric world economy in which there are at least four countries. The countries are differentiated with respect to their market size and they choose their trading partners. In the coalition-proof Nash equilibrium, either there is global free trade or free trade areas are formed among similar countries.     

我国复杂技术产业的市场追赶态势研究:国际贸易视角

从国际贸易的视角来探讨我国复杂技术产业的市场追赶态势。研究发现:我国复杂技术产业的市场追赶绩效明显,就产品和工艺都复杂的产品而言,我国出口额占全世界出口额的比例从2000年的2.41%快速上升到2008年的10.96%,产品和工艺都复杂的产品的出口额占我国出口总额的比例从2000年的46.43%上升到2008年的72.35%;从中、美、德、日、韩五国的比较结果来看,在产品和工艺都复杂的产品的出口总额中,2000—2008年间美国和日本所占份额都在下降,德国和韩国缓慢增长,我国快速增长,从第5位上升到第2位;从国际贸易平衡来看,在产品和工艺都复杂的产品领域,2000—2008年间我国成功地从净进口国转变为净出口国,但同期日本和德国在此类产品上一直保持较高的贸易顺差,我国和日本、德国在复杂技术产业领域的贸易顺差还有较大差距。     

R&D policy with layers of economic integration

This paper examines whether the optimal unilateral R&D policy for an open economy is a subsidy or a tax. It constructs a general equilibrium model with three successive layers of international integration: (a) trade in goods, (b) trade in technologies with international R&D spillovers and (c) internationally-coordinated R&D policy. Trade in technologies introduces the possibility that an R&D subsidy will have such strong, negative terms-of-trade effects that it harms domestic welfare. Numerical simulations of the OECD show this is a possibility for the US and Japan. With international R&D spillovers a domestic R&D subsidy may reduce domestic innovation.     

论中国对外贸易发展战略的选择

伴随着以知识经济和技术创新为主导的经济全球化的推进,国际贸易对每个国家经济的引擎作用不可同日而语,国际市场竞争变得愈加激烈,其形式、内容也发生了深刻的变化。长期指导我国外贸战略的比较优势贸易理论已不再适应国际、国内经济形势的变化,制约着经济的快速发展。因此,我国应逐步淡出比较优势战略,而选择以竞争优势为主导的贸易发展战略。     

A Neo-Heckscher–Ohlin Model of Trade with Endogenous Production Patterns*

We propose a Neo-Heckscher–Ohlin (HO) model of trade that combines comparative endowment advantage, comparative technological advantage, international capital mobility and trade costs. Using an inframarginal approach, we produce a partition of the exogenous parameter space in a host of parameter value subsets that demarcate the various equilibrium patterns of production and trade. The results are startling! They suggest that production within the diversification cone – a key assumption of the Heckscher–Ohlin theory that is required for its core propositions (such as factor price equalisation) to hold – may only prevail on the razor's edge, or under exceptional circumstances. In addition, our findings nominate a mechanism by which improvements in transaction efficiency facilitate international trade thereby stimulating cross-country division of labour. Contrary to other generalisations of the Heckscher–Ohlin (such as the various derivatives of the Kemp–Jones model of trade), our model does not assume a purely Ricardian character: comparative endowment advantage may determine the pattern of trade even in the presence of opposing technological differences, as long as total factor productivity coefficients adjusted for transaction efficiency and factor intensity do not confer unambiguous comparative (technological) advantage. Still, ‘intensity-efficiency’-adjusted comparative technological advantage supersedes factor endowments in determining the flow of trade.     

Is piracy sustainable?

We develop a model of international trade between three countries, one of which hosts pirates. When the number of pirate ships increases, the probability for one of the pirate ships (for one commercial ship) encountering a commercial (pirate) ship decreases (increases). Then, the commercial ships have an incentive to spend more on defence and pirate ships to invest less on attack. If pirates operate under free entry, they do not internalize the entry externality. Then, their number rises until it reaches a level such that their attack power has become negligible and the defence of the commercial ships has reached a high level. The economy settles in a full deterrence equilibrium. However, if the number of pirate ships is controlled by an authority, which maximizes piracy's profit, the economy settles in an equilibrium where piracy is active and commercial ships spend less on defence. Piracy is a substitute for trade. Piracy depends on the terms of trade of the pirate country and on the relative efficiency of the attack versus the defence.     

International business cycles and the relative price of investment goods

Abstract Is the relative price of investment goods a good proxy for investment specific technology? We model this relative price in a flexible price international economy with two fundamental shocks, namely, the total factor productivity (TFP) shock and the investment‐specific technology (IST) shock. We show that the one‐to‐one correspondence between the IST shock and the relative price of investment goods breaks down in an international economy because of the short‐run correlation between the terms of trade and the relative price of investment goods. The data congruent negative correlation between the investment rate and the relative price of investment goods thus does not necessarily reflect decline in investment frictions (rise in IST), as suggested by many studies. A calibration experiment with the US data demonstrates that such an inverse relation between rate of investment and the relative price of investment goods basically reflects the positive effect of TFP on the terms of trade for a broad range of economies where the home bias in consumption exceeds investment and there is a sizable adjustment cost of investment.     

Technological convergence, R&D, trade and productivity growth

This paper analyses productivity growth in a panel of 14 United Kingdom manufacturing industries since 1970. Innovation and technology transfer provide two potential sources of productivity growth for a country behind the technological frontier. We examine the roles played by research and development (R&D), international trade, and human capital in stimulating each source of productivity growth. Technology transfer is statistically significant and quantitatively important. While R&D raises rates of innovation, international trade enhances the speed of technology transfer. Human capital primarily affects output through private rates of return (captured in our index of labour quality) rather than measured TFP.     

我国建筑服务贸易国际竞争力影响因素的实证分析

用我国建筑服务贸易出口额表示建筑服务贸易国际竞争力,从微观、中观、宏观层面分析影响我国建筑服务贸易国际竞争力的因素。实证结果表明:我国建筑服务业的发展程度、市场开放度和技术创新能力与我国建筑服务贸易国际竞争力具有正向关系,其中,市场开放度的影响最大,其次是建筑业的发展程度和技术创新能力。在此基础上,提出如下提升我国建筑服务贸易国际竞争力的措施:提高建筑服务企业技术创新的推广及应用力度;完善产业政策;建立统一、开放、竞争、有序的建筑市场环境。     

Perfect Competition and Endogenous Comparitive Advantage

This paper analyzes a dynamic Ricardian model of international trade in which relative differences in technology are endogenously determined by investments in innovation by competitive firms. It considers the impact of these investments on trade patterns and the effect of trade patterns on rates of innovation and growth. The main result is that the dynamic effects of trade need not be positive when both countries specialize investments in the goods in which they have a comparitive advantage. In addition, trade can lead to an inefficient pattern of specialization in innovation and have negative welfare effects.     

贸易的技术创新效应*——国内外贸易联动与部门间分工的权衡

国际贸易可以通过技术溢出提升一国的技术创新水平,但发展中国家的价值链低端锁定却可能阻碍技术溢出效应的实现。在引入国内贸易的分析视角后,国内外贸易联动发展有助于提升贸易的技术创新效应。国内外贸易联动可通过竞争驱动效应、信息扩散效应与价值链组接效应强化技术溢出在竞争、模仿、上下游联系等方面的影响,进而推动技术创新。而国内外贸易部门专业化则在其中发挥着正向调节作用。本文构建了国内外贸易联动指标,通过面板固定效应、面板分位数模型对相关作用机制进行了实证检验,并通过了稳健性检验。实证结果支持了国内外贸易联动对技术创新的提升作用,并且在国内贸易专业化程度较高的地区,国内外贸易联动的正面影响更强。