On the welfare effects of trade and investment liberalization

Using a three-factor knowledge- and physical capital model of trade and multinational activity, we consider a set of policy experiments to assess the welfare effects of trade and investment liberalization in general equilibrium. Specifically, we address the question of whether and under which circumstances a single versus a combined trade/investment liberalization strategy or a unilateral versus a bilateral policy change is preferable from a single country's and the world's point of view. The focus of this paper is to look at three relevant questions. First, when is investment liberalization beneficial and when is it harmful for a single economy or the whole world? Second, is pure investment liberalization a welfare maximizing strategy? Third, when is either kind of liberalization (trade, investment, or both) welfare improving and when neither of them?     

Long-term impact of trade liberalization on human capital formation

While a growing line of research has assessed the effect of trade liberalization on human capital formation, most of these studies focus on its short-term effect on individual’s school attendance. Much less is known about its long-run effect, as well as the impact on other aspects of human capital formation such as labor market and noncognitive outcomes. This paper studies the impact of trade liberalization on individuals’ long-term human capital accumulation, including school attendance, cognitive abilities, labor market performance, and noncognitive outcomes. By constructing prefecture-year-level tariff barriers, our identification strategy exploits variations in different cohorts’ exposure to a trade shock at age 16 for individuals within the same prefecture. Empirical results suggest that trade liberalization leads to decreased completed years of schooling, cognitive abilities, wage, and noncognitive outcomes. We provide suggestive evidence that this observed pattern is explained by the expansion of job opportunities in relatively low-skilled and labor-intensive sectors.     

Redistribution, fertility, and growth: The effect of the opportunities abroad

This article analyzes the effect of the opportunities abroad on the growth path that a small open economy, in which redistribution policy in favor of less prosperous segments takes place, is expected to follow. The model shows that redistribution policy raises fertility among the unskilled recipients, lowers fertility among the contributing skilled, slows human capital accumulation, and reduces per-capita output growth. The paper demonstrates that the opportunities abroad determine the share of income redistributed and ultimately induce the offspring of the unskilled to invest in human capital and decrease their family size.     

The better you are the stronger it makes you: Evidence on the asymmetric impact of liberalization

This paper shows how trade liberalization can have an asymmetric effect on heterogeneous firms. It develops a neo-Schumpeterian growth model predicting that the impact of liberalization on economic performance is positive “on average”, but more advanced firms benefit more. These predictions are tested using Mexican plant-level data confirming that, under NAFTA, the liberalization spurred productivity growth on average. However, the empirical analysis goes beyond estimating the average effect of liberalization and shows that more advanced firms benefited disproportionately more from the liberalization. Focusing on the mechanisms explaining these results, the paper shows that the results are not just driven by an increase in input usage and investments, but rather by innovative and managerial efforts as they are significantly stronger in those sectors where the scope for innovative activities is larger.     

Quantifying the impact of services liberalization in a developing country

We compare goods versus services liberalization in terms of welfare, outputs, and factor prices in Tunisia using a CGE model with multiple products, services and trading partners. Restraints on services trade involve both cross-border supply (tariff-equivalent price wedges) and on foreign ownership (monopoly-rent distortions and inefficiency costs). Goods-trade liberalization yields a modest gain in aggregate welfare. Reducing service barriers generate relatively large welfare gains and low adjustment costs. Services liberalization increases economic activity in all sectors and raise the real returns to both capital and labor. The results point to the potential importance of deregulating services provision for economic development.     

Measuring China’s trade liberalization: A generalized measure of trade restrictiveness index

Neither simple average nor import-weighted average tariff indexes are ideal measures of tariff barriers. In this paper, we propose a generalized trade restrictiveness index (GTRI) that extends Feenstra’s (1995) tariff restrictiveness index (TRI) by relaxing the crucial assumption of a small open economy. We show that the GTRI can be measured using import tariffs, import shares, and the corresponding import and foreign export elasticities. We then apply the GTRI to examine how trade restrictiveness has evolved in China from 1997 to 2008, the period in which China entered the WTO. The GTRI indicates a higher level of protection than simple and import-weighted averages, but lower than the TRI. We further show a negative correlation between tariffs and product export supply elasticity, indicating that strategic trade policy was being pursued prior to China’s WTO accession. Finally, we calculate the welfare loss and terms-of-trade gain due to tariff protection. The overall tariff pass-through increases from around 28% to almost 47% because of the WTO.     

Countries, regions and trade: On the welfare impacts of economic integration

We study the impact of falling international trade costs and falling national transport costs on the economic geography of countries involved in an integration process. Each country is formed by two regions between which labor is mobile, whereas there is no international mobility. Goods can be traded both nationally and internationally at positive, but different, costs. A decrease in trade costs and/or in transport costs has a direct impact on prices and wages, which allows us to account for the impact of changes in these parameters on the economic geography and welfare of each country. We show that, as trade barriers fall, the benefits of integration come after its costs. We also show that national transport policies are of the beggar-thy-neighbor type. On both counts, policy coordination is required in the process of economic integration.     

Investigating regional house price convergence in the United States: Evidence from a pair-wise approach

In this paper we examine long-run house price convergence across US states using a novel econometric approach advocated by Pesaran (2007) and Pesaran et al. (2009). Our empirical modelling strategy employs a probabilistic test statistic for convergence based on the percentage of unit root rejections among all state house price differentials. Using a sieve bootstrap procedure, we construct confidence intervals and find evidence in favour of convergence. We also conclude that speed of adjustment towards long-run equilibrium is inversely related to distance.     

A test of trade theories when expenditure is home biased

We develop a criterion to distinguish two dominant paradigms of international trade theory: homogeneous-goods perfectly competitive models, and differentiated-goods monopolistically competitive models. Our analysis makes use of the pervasive presence of home-biased expenditure. It predicts that countries’ relative output and their relative home biases are positively correlated in differentiated-goods sectors (the “home-bias effect”), while no such relationship exists in homogeneous-goods sectors. This discriminating criterion turns out to be robust to a number of generalisations of the baseline model. Our empirical results, based on a world-wide cross-country data set, suggest that the differentiated-goods model fits particularly well for the machinery, precision engineering and transport equipment industries, which account for some 40% of sample manufacturing output.     

Labor Market Effects of Economic Integration: The Impact of Re-Unification in German Border Regions

Abstract. This paper exploits the significant reduction in impediments to labor mobility in the process of German re-unification in order to identify labor supply shocks in the West German labor market. The focus is on the quasi-experiment of the border removal in the regions situated at the German–German border that faced a massive increase of cross-border labor supply. The results indicate that despite a gain in employment, the border removal was accompanied by a decline in wages and an increase in unemployment relative to other West German regions.     

The fiscal impact of high-skilled emigration: Flows of Indians to the U.S.

What are the fiscal consequences of high-skilled emigration for source countries? This paper develops methodologies for inferring these consequences and applies them to the recent sizable emigration of high-skilled workers from India to the U.S. This wave of emigration from India to the U.S. is shown to be unusually concentrated amongst the prime-age work force, the highly educated and high earners. In order to calculate the fiscal losses associated with these emigrants, estimates of their counterfactual earnings distributions are generated using two distinct methods and integrated with a model of the Indian fiscal system to calculate fiscal consequences. Conservative estimates indicate that the annual net fiscal impact to India of high-skilled emigration to the U.S. is one-half of 1% of gross national income (or 2.5% of total fiscal revenues). The sensitivity of these results to the method of predicting counterfactual incomes and the implications of these estimates for other developing countries is discussed in detail.     

The impact of the Self‐Sufficiency Project on the employment behaviour of former welfare recipients

Abstract The Self‐Sufficiency Project (SSP) was a Canadian randomized trial in which the program group had 12 months to find full‐time employment in order to qualify for a subsidy that roughly doubled their pre‐tax earnings for the next three years. We find evidence of significant impacts of SSP on non‐employment and employment durations. For the treated group, simulation results show an impact on the employment rate at 52 months after random assignment in the range of 7 to 11 percentage points; this is approximately a 25% increase in the employment rate compared with having no treatment in place.     

The impact of state economic differentials on household welfare and labor force behavior

This paper calculates state-specific income expectations for low-income households, using a simultaneous model of household labor force and welfare participation decisions. A variety of simulations indicate the interlocking effects of existing state differences in welfare, wages and taxes on work/welfare choices and income. Significant differences among similar households in different states occur. Equalization of welfare benefits eliminates some but not all of these differences, but generates potentially serious policy problems for the states.     

Life cycle employment and fertility across institutional environments

In this paper, we formulate a dynamic utility maximization model of female labor force participation and fertility choices and estimate approximate decision rules using data on married women in Italy, Spain and France. The estimated decision rules indicate that first-order state dependence is the most important factor determining female labor supply behavior in all three countries. We also find that cross-country differences in state dependence effects are consistent with the order of country-level measures of labor market flexibility and child care availability. Counterfactual simulations of the model indicate that female employment rates in Italy and Spain could reach EU target levels were French social policies to be adopted in those countries.     

Tariff pass-through and the distributional effects of trade liberalization

This paper estimates the distribution of welfare gains due to the trade reforms in India by simultaneously considering the effect on prices of tradable goods and wages. The cost of consumption for each household is affected by the domestic price changes, while wage incomes adjust to these price changes in equilibrium. Three rounds of the Indian Employment and Consumption Surveys are used for the analysis. The price transmission mechanisms are estimated for both rural and urban areas to understand the extent to which the trade reforms are able to affect the domestic prices. In order to assess the distributional effects, a series of nonparametric local linear regressions are estimated. The findings show that households at all per capita expenditure levels had experienced gains as a result of the trade liberalization, while the average effect was generally pro-poor and varied significantly across the per capita expenditure spectrum.     

The intergenerational transmission of maternal human capital and the gender gap in educational attainment

An intergenerational effect of maternal (and not paternal) human capital on offspring's human capital production is a mechanism that induces males and females to attain different education levels. This mechanism allows for explanations of the reversal in the gender education gap.     

The impact of liberalization on bureaucratic corruption

Liberalization increases the number of goods available for consumption within a country. Since bureaucrats value variety, this raises the marginal utility of accepting a bribe. This “benefit effect” is counteracted by an increasing “cost effect” from corruption deterrence activities that arise due to greater international pressure to curb corruption. The interaction of these two effects can lead to a non-monotonic relation between liberalization and corruption. Moreover, pre-commitment to deterrence activities is shown to be more effective in controlling corruption. Empirical evidence supports the existence of a non-monotonic relation between economic openness and corruption among developing countries.     

The effect of foreign aid on corruption: A quantile regression approach

This paper investigates the effect of foreign aid on corruption using a quantile regression method. We show that foreign aid generally reduces corruption, and its reduction effect is greater in less corrupt countries. Moreover, this effect is different by different donor countries.     

The effect of monetary policy on real house price growth in South Africa: A factor-augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR) approach

This paper assesses the impact of monetary policy on real house price growth in South Africa using a factor-augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR), estimated using a large data set comprising of 246 quarterly series over the period 1980:01 to 2006:04. The results based on the impulse response functions indicate that, in general, house price inflation responds negatively to monetary policy shock, but the responses are heterogeneous across the middle-, luxury- and affordable-segments of the housing market. The luxury-, large-middle- and medium-middle-segments are found to respond much more than the small-middle- and the affordable-segments of the housing market. More importantly, we find no evidence of the home price puzzle, observed previously by other studies that analyzed house prices using small-scale models. We put this down to the benefit gained from using a large information set.     

Economic Development, Trade and Wages

We present models that allow the use of unskilled and skilled labor as well as capital and land. Thus agriculture, important in developing countries, can be included as well as two types of labor and a single (or two) type(s) of physical capital. The models are related to the simple 3×2 specific factors structure by means of what is called the linear neighborhood structure, wherein no activity uses more than two factors, and the two types of labor work in separated sectors, using in common a type of physical capital. We discuss how wage rate changes are related when endowments change, when agriculture becomes traded and prices rise, and when unskilled labor becomes educated and joins the ranks of skilled workers.