Conceptualising the Role of International Capital Flows for Housing Markets

The existing literature on the role of international capital flows for housing markets can be classified into approaches which focus on the macro relationship between the current account and housing prices on the one hand and studies which specify more specific transmission channels on the other. Building on this literature, we conceptualise the role of international capital flows for housing markets via four central transmission channels. We suggest that by differentiating among these channels, the risk build-up potential of capital flows for housing markets can be evaluated more precisely than in the early literature on global imbalances.     

Liberalising Services Trade in the EU

The internal market for services, which are estimated to account for 60 to 70 per cent of economic activity in the European Union, is still rife with legal and administrative barriers to cross-border trade. The problems involved in integrating national services markets into one large internal market are highlighted by the ongoing fierce controversy over the Commission’s proposed services directive. The following contributions discuss some pertinent issues.

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*The article is based in part on a paper prepared for the World Trade Forum 2004 in Berne (“The Single Undertaking After Cancun: Diversity and Variable Geometry in the World Trading System”). All references in the following are to the European Communities, reflecting its membership status in the WTO, rather than to the European Union. The views expressed are those of the author and cannot be attributed to the WTO Secretariat.     

美国贸易政策不确定性与新兴经济体跨境股票资本流动北大核心CSSCI

本文使用1996年2月-2020年1月35个新兴经济体的跨境股票型基金微观数据,实证考察美国贸易政策不确定性对新兴经济体跨境股票资本流动的影响。结果表明:美国贸易政策不确定性上升会导致新兴经济体跨境股票型基金净资本流入下降,这一影响在2008年全球金融危机后更为显著。受国别因素影响,美国贸易政策不确定性的影响存在异质性。一国外汇风险暴露水平更高、国际金融一体化风险更大、与美国直接贸易联系更紧密,受到的美国贸易政策不确定性的影响更显著,更高的利率水平有利于缓解美国贸易政策不确定性的影响。从全球价值链视角来看,美国贸易政策不确定性上升对处于研发密集型行业下游和邮政通讯、金融商业服务等行业下游的经济体影响显著。渠道分析表明,全球投资者对新兴经济体的国别风险情绪变化是美国贸易政策不确定性冲击的重要传导渠道。进一步研究表明,中美贸易摩擦期间,主要受美国贸易政策不确定性影响,加征关税会显著降低新兴经济体跨境股票型基金净资本流入。在金融开放进程中,新兴经济体应防范外部不确定性引发的资本流动剧烈波动风险,保持宏观经济与金融市场稳定。     

The Relationship between Political Tensions,Trade and Capital Flows in ASEAN Plus Three

We estimate the effects of political tension on trade and capital flows in ASEAN Plus Three countries in the framework of a gravity model. We quantify political tension through text‐parsing software reading daily Reuters’ articles from 1990 to 2013 and exclude Brunei and Laos due to sparsity of news coverage. Regarding bilateral trade, we find that political conflict, measured by negative reports in Reuters’ articles, seems to only affect bilateral trade between countries that are not both members of the World Trade Organization (WTO). For these countries, a 1 per cent rise in the tension score results in a 0.05 per cent decline in trade. There is weaker evidence that improvement in bilateral relationship, measured by positive reports in Reuters’ articles, is associated with more trade. As for capital flows, while long‐term capital flows, measured by foreign direct investment, appear to be unaffected by short‐term tensions, both a non‐democratic government and a history of war negatively affect FDI.     

Liberalising Trends in Israel's Trade Policy: Trade Policy Review of Israel

Israeli authorities have been generally efficient in implementing gradual, mostly unilateral, liberalisation of their country's trade policy regime, with agriculture and related activities being the only major exceptions to the rule. This trend reflects a broad consensus among major political parties in Israel in pursuing liberal trade policy reforms. An alternative interpretation of the liberalising trend is that protectionist pressures from organised sectoral lobbies were either weak or inefficient.     

Determinants of Bilateral Trade Flows in OECD Countries: Evidence from Gravity Panel Data Models

This paper aims to identify the main causes of bilateral trade flows in OECD countries. The specific features of the study include the explicit introduction of R&D and FDI as the two important explanatory variables, conduct of unit root tests in the panel data framework and careful consideration of endogeneity. The main findings are that the levels and similarities of market size, domestic R&D stock and inward FDI stock are positively related to bilateral trade, while the distance, measured by both geographical distance and relative factor endowment, between trade partner countries has a negative impact. These findings lend support to new trade, FDI and new growth theories.     

地缘政治风险、政策不确定性与短期国际资本流动

在开放经济条件下,通过构建一个基于地缘政治风险、政策不确定性以及短期国际资本流动的TVP-VAR-SV模型,在控制宏观经济因素和市场因素后,分析地缘政治风险和政策不确定性对我国短期国际资本流动的时变影响。结果表明,地缘政治风险和政策不确定性对短期国际资本流动具有明显的时变负向短期影响特征,宏观经济因子、中美利差和人民币升值预期对短期国际资本流动具有基础性影响,短期国际资本流动具有显著正向自反馈效应。基于上述结论,将地缘政治风险和政策不确定性风险纳入宏观审慎监管的框架,有利于对短期国际资本流动进行短期管理,防止短期国际资本流动出现较大幅度波动。     

金融发展、制度质量与国际证券资本流动

本文以47个经济体2000-2016年的数据为样本,利用迭代GMM方法在规模和波动双视角下研究了金融发展和制度质量对国际证券资本流动的影响及其机制,并在此基础上进一步考察了这一影响在不同类型经济体以及不同种类国际证券资本中的异质性,估计结果如下.(1)金融发展有利于国际证券资本流动规模的增加,但未显著降低其波动风险,制度质量在吸引和稳定国际证券资本流动方面均发挥了积极作用.(2)当资本账户开放处于较高水平时,金融发展在吸引国际证券投资方面的作用较强,在稳定国际证券投资方面的作用较弱.(3)高制度质量通过改进主权信用评级影响了国际证券资本流动.(4)异质性结果表明,从不同类型经济体看,发达经济体的金融发展促进了国际证券资本流动规模的增加,新兴经济体的金融发展降低了国际证券资本流动的波动风险,而发达经济体的制度质量在吸引和稳定国际证券资本流动方面均比新兴经济体发挥了更重要的作用;从国际证券资本种类看,金融发展增加了股权资本流动的波动风险,制度质量在吸引和稳定债券资本流动方面均发挥了积极作用.因此,中国需要继续完善金融体系,不断提升制度质量,同时注意防范资本账户开放过程中可能出现的金融风险传染和金融不稳定对国际证券资本流动的冲击.     

我国国际资本流动影响因素的实证研究

本文对1982-2004年期间我国的国际资本流动状况及其影响因素进行了实证研究。研究结果表明:我国国际资本流动存在着数量上波动性和方向上双向性之特点,其主要影响因素是人民币汇率预期,其次是物价水平和名义汇率,而利率因素的影响并非显著。其政策含义是,在当前内外经济条件下,人民币升值并非可举之策;但在长远,资本流动的双向性决定了浮动汇率制度是我国汇率制度改革的必然选择。     

Liberalising Trade in the Agriculture Sector of a Small Island State: The Case of Fiji

This paper uses Fiji as a case study to investigate the impacts of three trade liberalisation policies – removal of sugar price subsidies, unilateral trade liberalisation and multilateral trade liberalisation, implied by the successful completion of the Doha Round. Removal of the sugar price subsidies has an adverse effect on real output, real national welfare and employment, but promotes growth of non‐agricultural exports in the long run. Unilateral trade liberalisation, in the form of tariff cuts in the agricultural sector, increases real output, real national welfare and non‐agricultural exports in the medium term. However, this growth is not sustained in the long term. The best outcome for Fiji is multilateral trade liberalisation which increases real output, real national welfare, non‐agricultural exports and employment. It is argued that reform of trade policies in less developed countries could come at a cost, therefore highlighting the need for compensating mechanisms to deal with the adverse impacts. Other measures to assist farmers to expand output in response to a rise in prices could include measures to reduce transport, storage and packaging costs, as well as institutional measures to enhance the functioning of input and factor markets.     

人力资本要素与国际服务贸易比较优势的发挥

随着世界范围内产业结构的调整,服务业已经成为各国经济发展的支柱产业,国际服务贸易在世界贸易中的比重正在不断上升,对经济发展的促进作用日益增强。决定一国服务贸易比较优势的根本性因素在于该国的人力资本状况。本文从人力资本的角度出发,阐述了人力资本在一国经济发展,服务业和服务贸易比较优势形成中的决定性作用,并对我国服务业和服务贸易的人力资本状况作出了分析。     

The Impact of Services Trade Restrictiveness on Trade Flows

This paper uses recent OECD data on services trade restrictions (STRI) to analyse the relationship between services trade policies and cross‐border trade in services. A standard gravity model is enhanced by the STRI indices in a cross‐section regression analysis. Services trade restrictions are negatively associated with both imports and exports of services. The surprisingly strong effect on services exports is probably explained by a negative relationship between the STRIs and sector performance indicators. Consequently, services suppliers from less open countries are less competitive abroad. Bilateral differences in regulation are also found to curtail services trade over and above the impact of the trade liberalisation level. At the margin, regulatory differences have a larger effect on trade flows the lower the level of the STRI.     

Exchange Rate Volatility and International Trade Flows in sub-Saharan Africa: Empirical Evidence

In this article, the authors examine the relationship between the volatility in exchange rates and the volume of international trade in sub-Saharan African countries. Using the gravity equation and annual data for the period 1998–2007, they find a statistically significant and negative correlation between the volatility in exchange rates and the volume of trade. The estimated elasticities show that the responsiveness of the flow of international trade to changes in exchange rate volatility is very small. This suggests that eliminating the volatility in the exchange rates will result in only small increments in the volume of trade. Accordingly, pursuing a policy of exchange rate stability would not be sufficient to significantly increase the volume of bilateral trade in the sub-Saharan African region.     

Modelling the Impact of Environmental Regulations on Bilateral Trade Flows: OECD, 1990–1996

Since the early seventies an increasing attention has been paid to the impact environmental polict nmight have on foreign trade. One of the most important issues is whether countries with relatively strict environmental regulations tend to experience a deterioration of international competitiveness and thus a fall in exports and a rise in imports, of the pollution‐intensive commodities or, on the other hand, benefit from the improvement in environmentally more sensitive industries. So far, most empirical studies have concluded that the proportion of environmental costs to the total production costs is still so marginal that environmental policies have hardly any effect on comparative advantage patterns and thus on foreign trade. One of the few exceptions is Van Beers and Van den Bergh (1997), who found that stricter regulations have some negative impact on bilateral trade flows between OECD countries. The aim of this paper is to show that tyhis outcome is partly due to model mis‐specification. The analysis id based on a triple indexed model and on its variants. It is found that, as soon as both the importing and exporting country specific effects are taken into consideration, the relationship between stricter regulations and foreign trade becomes statistically insignificant. This suggests that environmental costs do not have a real impact, neither negative nor positive, on foreign trade.