Is India Specialising in Polluting Industries? Evidence from US‐India Bilateral Trade

Recently, the apex environmental agency of India observed that domestic industrial pollution has been increasing at an alarming rate over the last two decades, and the need to rein in traditional polluting industries. This raises the pertinent question of whether the poor domestic pollution regime has affected the pattern of India's trade in dirty manufactured products in the post‐liberalisation era since 1991. We find that on the whole, India has remained a net importer of pollution‐intensive manufactured goods; however, there is a distinct trend of increasing specialisation in specific dirty industries especially in the bilateral trade with high‐income countries, and to a lesser degree with low‐income countries. The USA being India's single largest country trading partner in the post‐liberalisation era, we test for pollution offshoring at the finer industry level in US‐India bilateral trade. While we find that the pollution haven effect is not significant, India's specialisation in certain dirty manufacturing industries through the last decade remains a disturbing trend. India needs to integrate environmental sustainability within industrial growth urgently, and it is pertinent to implement policies which would reflect the true pollution costs in an industry that is increasingly competing in the international market.     

Trade barriers and the relative price of tradables

In this paper I quantitatively address the role of trade barriers in explaining why prices of services relative to tradables are positively correlated with levels of development across countries. I argue that trade barriers play a crucial role in shaping the cross-country pattern of specialization across many tradable goods. I construct a multi-country, general equilibrium model of trade and derive tractable predictions that show how specialization affects relative prices. I calibrate the model to match the patterns of prices, levels of development, and bilateral trade across 103 countries. Through counterfactuals I find that removing trade barriers eliminates more than half of the gap in the relative price of services between rich and poor countries with only a minimal systematic effect on the absolute price of tradables.     

Productivity, terms of trade and the ‘home market effect’

This paper analyzes the international transmission and welfare implications of productivity gains and changes in market size when macroeconomic adjustment occurs both along the intensive margin of trade (changes in the relative price of existing varieties of tradable goods) and the extensive margin (creation and destruction of varieties). We draw a distinction between productivity gains that enhance manufacturing efficiency and gains that lower the cost of firms' entry and of product differentiation. Countries with lower manufacturing costs have higher GDP but supply their products at lower international prices. Instead, countries with lower entry costs supply a larger array of goods at improved terms of trade. Output growth driven by demographic expansions, as well as government spending, is associated with an improvement in international relative prices and firms' entry. While trade liberalization may result in a smaller array of goods available to consumers, efficiency gains from deeper economic integration benefit consumers via lower goods prices. The international transmission mechanism and the welfare spillovers vary under different asset market structures, depending on trade costs, the elasticity of labor supply, and consumers' taste for varieties.     

Trade Effects of Anti-dumping in India: Who Benefits?

This article assesses the trade effects of anti-dumping (AD) duties levied on 177 (8-digit) products by India during the period 1994 to June 2001. A panel regression has been applied to quantify the effects of AD actions on import volumes, values, and prices. It finds that the investigation effects of AD actions are not substantial. The imposition of AD duties restrains trade (both volume and value) and raises import prices. While trade effects start dissipating in subsequent years, import prices from both named and unnamed countries rise significantly in the post-duty years. There is little evidence that trade is diverted from unnamed to named countries. Thus, the domestic industry is benefited due to the price rise. Their financial position improves at the expense of both consumers and downstream industries. Since anti-dumping is an expensive form of protection, only large and dominant producers in concentrated industries emerge as the major beneficiaries of this protection. Finally, the developing trade partner countries suffer significant import losses when named. However, the trade destruction effect is insignificant for developed countries. Even though the unit value of their imports rises, there is no evidence of decline in trade from these countries.     

Weak links in the chain of comparative advantage

This paper examines the proposition that trade in many commodities can be explained by a chain of comparative advantage. It is first shown, in a two-country, two-factor model, that trade accords with the ranking of goods by factor intensity if there are unequal factor prices, free trade, and only final goods. This result continues to hold if either trade impediments or intermediate products are introduced. However, if both are present, the chain proposition breaks down. Finally, with many countries, it is shown that trade impediments alone can invalidate the chain proposition.     

基于BP神经网络的出口产品价格监测预警模型

根据反倾销理论,当出口商品的价格低于其正常价值、进口国同类商品的价格降幅明显且其生产者遭受到严重损失时,进口国政府将进行反倾销诉讼。基于此,以我国出口至美国的棉纱为例,利用BP神经网络建立了出口产品价格监测预警模型,旨在提高我国出口棉纱生产商及政府在面对美国反倾销诉讼或实施贸易保护政策时的反应能力。实验结果显示:该模型具有较高的训练和预测精度,可以起到预警的效果。     

Local costs of distribution,international trade costs and micro evidence on the law of one price

This paper connects trade flows to deviations from the law of one price (LOOP) in a structural model of trade and retailing. It accounts for the observed cross-country dispersion in prices of goods, based on retail price survey data, by focusing on two sources of goods market segmentation — (i) international trade costs, and (ii) non-traded input costs of distribution. I find that a multi-sector Ricardian trade model, ala Eaton–Kortum, augmented with a distribution sector, can account for the average price dispersion for a basket of goods fully and generates 70% of the variation in price dispersion across goods within the basket. While tradability of goods is important in explaining the average price dispersion for the basket of goods, distribution costs are important in explaining why, within the basket, some goods show more price dispersion than others.     

Industry demand characteristics and the structure-performance relationship

Theoretical models of industrial profitability have included the price clasticity of demand among the structural elements that explain profitability. Empirical studies have accounted for variations in demand characteristics across industries by sample partition or use of broadly defined dummy variables.Variations in demand characteristics across industries can be modeled directly, by including among the variables that explain industrial profitability the share of industry sales going to different classes of consumers, for example, final consumer demand and different segments of the public sector.In empirical tests, inclusion of such demand share variables improves the explanatory power of the model, especially for consumer goods industries.     

Differentiated products and evasion of import tariffs

An emerging literature has demonstrated some unique characteristics of trade in differentiated products. This paper contributes to the literature by postulating that differentiated products may be subject to greater tariff evasion due to the difficulties associated with assessing their quality and price. Using product-level data on trade between Germany and 10 Eastern European countries during 1992-2003, we find empirical support for this hypothesis. We show that the trade gap, defined as the discrepancy between the value of exports reported by Germany and the value of imports from Germany reported by the importing country, is positively related to the level of tariff in 8 out of 10 countries. Further, we show that the responsiveness of the trade gap to the tariff level is greater for differentiated products than for homogeneous goods. A one-percentage-point increase in the tariff rate is associated with a 0.4% increase in the trade gap in the case of homogeneous products and a 1.7% increase in the case of differentiated products. Finally, the data indicate that tariff evasion takes place through misrepresentation of the import prices rather than underreporting of quantities or product misclassification.     

Differentiated products and evasion of import tariffs

An emerging literature has demonstrated some unique characteristics of trade in differentiated products. This paper contributes to the literature by postulating that differentiated products may be subject to greater tariff evasion due to the difficulties associated with assessing their quality and price. Using product-level data on trade between Germany and 10 Eastern European countries during 1992–2003, we find empirical support for this hypothesis. We show that the trade gap, defined as the discrepancy between the value of exports reported by Germany and the value of imports from Germany reported by the importing country, is positively related to the level of tariff in 8 out of 10 countries. Further, we show that the responsiveness of the trade gap to the tariff level is greater for differentiated products than for homogeneous goods. A one-percentage-point increase in the tariff rate is associated with a 0.4% increase in the trade gap in the case of homogeneous products and a 1.7% increase in the case of differentiated products. Finally, the data indicate that tariff evasion takes place through misrepresentation of the import prices rather than underreporting of quantities or product misclassification.     

The Welfare Analysis of a Free Trade Zone: Intermediate Goods and the Asian Tigers

We analyse trade reform among the ASEAN countries, which recently began removing all mutual trade barriers. The standard method to avoid complete specialisation in traded goods is to distinguish goods both by physical type and place of origin (the so‐called Armington assumption). This methodology is not suitable for the sort of intermediate goods produced by the ASEAN countries. We develop a computational approach in the context of a non‐Armington dynamic general equilibrium model. Analysing the results of a calibrated version of the model, we find that trade liberalisation is generally welfare improving for the ASEAN countries.     

Determinants of price flexibility in oligopolistic markets: Evidence from austrian manufacturing

In this paper, we examine the impact of market structure (concentration) on three different characteristics of industrial pricing behavior: 1) the sensitivity of prices to cost and demand changes, 2) the speed of price adjustment, and 3) the asymmetry of price behavior. We find the relationship between concentration and the sensitivity of prices to cost changes to be the most robust one. Cost changes are less fully transmitted into prices in highly concentrated industries. Overall, differences in the pricing behavior across industries can be “explained” fairly well with industry differences in concentration, capital intensity, inventoriability, and the length of the production period.     

Putting industries into the Eaton–Kortum model

The article introduces the industry dimension into the Eaton-Kortum model of trade. Industries are linked with each other by domestic and international trade in intermediate goods. The model is parametrized using data for eight industries in 1989. It is used to perform several counterfactual simulations that are relevant to today's policy debates. First, the model is used to study the effects of the US–EU trade wars. It is found that trade wars have a greater negative effect on countries with large initial net export positions. It is also found that some trade war scenarios are more beneficial to the US while others to the EU. Second, the model is used to study the effects of trade barrier reductions between the high-income and middle-income countries. The results show that this trade liberalization tends to reinforce the pattern of trade according to technological comparative advantages. The results also show which industries should be targeted for barrier reductions depending on policy goals. The third set of simulations investigates spillovers from the technological growth in the US machinery industry. The results show how geography, technology, and industry links affect the propagation of this growth across countries and industries.     

Transmission of external price disturbances and the composition of trade

This paper focuses on the role of trade composition in the transmission of external price disturbances. It is shown that the effects of an increase in the price of imports on domestic prices and the trade balance crucially depend on the cross price elasticity of demand in the case of final goods and the elasticity of substitution between factors in the case of intermediate goods. In the case of an input such as oil, where the elasticity of substitution between imported and domestic factors of production is less than unity, an increase in its price will give rise to a balance-of-trade deficit but will have ambiguous effects on domestic prices.     

GROWTH,COMMODITY PRICES,INFLATION AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME

A primary commodity price boom is underway. Given the role of internationally traded primary commodities as inputs into the productive process in the industrialized world, an important question arises: namely what effects will this price‐boom exert upon wage and price inflation in industrialized countries? In order to address this question, we specify and estimate a system of equations in which the key dependent variables are world commodity prices, the domestic inflation rate for finished goods and the rate of domestic industrial wage inflation. This model is estimated against data for each of three major industrialized countries: Japan, the UK and the USA and the implications of the results thus obtained are explored.     

Explaining import quality: The role of the income distribution

We examine a generalized version of Flam and Helpman [Flam, H., Helpman, E., 1987. Vertical Product Differentiation and North-South Trade. American Economic Review, 77, 810-822.] in which consumption prices for quality differentiated goods are rising in household income. We provide propositions for aggregating this relationship across heterogenous households to map cross-country differences in income distributions to cross-country differences in import price distributions. The theoretical predictions are examined and confirmed using disaggregated data on prices of traded goods and micro data on household income from the Luxemburg Income Study. Country pairs with more similar income distributions have more similar import price distributions, whether similarity is measured by 1st-4th moment statistics, population and consumption shares within world income and product price quantiles, or income and price dis-similarity indices.     

我国工业制成品出口贸易结构与竞争力实证分析

近年来,我国工业制成品出口贸易有了较快的发展,贸易结构也有了很大提升。通过多个竞争力指标的分析得出的结论是:我国出口产品在劳动密集型领域具有一定的国际竞争力;在资本技术密集型领域,出口产品的国际竞争力水平起步比较低,但近年来发展很快;出口价格总体上呈现出不断下降的趋势,贸易条件需要改善。     

Duopolists’ Retail Pricing Behavior in Multiple Markets

The law of one price asserts that, with costless trade, prices for identical goods in different countries should be equal after accounting for the exchange rate. The empirical literature suggests that exchange rate pass-through to prices is low and that the law of one price fails; instead, firms are more likely to price to market. This study adds to the literature by examining the pricing strategy of comic book firms within the context of the competition’s pricing behavior in a duopoly industry. Comic books, uniquely, display their retail prices in multiple countries on their cover giving us detailed information about the pricing behavior of each individual firm and their competition which allows us to test a pricing-to-market model. We find that an empirical model of an imperfectly applied law of one price outperforms a simple competitive, pricing-to-market model of pricing. Retail exchange rate pass-through rates between Canada and the United States average 76.8 %. This high exchange rate pass-through rate for comic books exists despite the existence of sticky prices and convenience pricing.     

DOES HYSTERESIS OCCUR IN TRADE? SOME EVIDENCE FOR BILATERAL EXPORT FLOWS AT A DISAGGREGATED LEVEL

This article shows that hysteresis effects can be specific to certain commodities and/or to trade with particular countries. We perform two tests to investigate two different implications of the hysteresis hypothesis. The first implication is that the relative price elasticity of demand for exports rises when a market becomes more competitive. The second implication is that relative export prices are insensitive to changes in the exporter's relative exchange rate. We find that hysteresis is not an insignificant phenomenon for some specific goods. Out of 14 products we can accept Baldwin's hysteresis hypothesis for three: manufacture of drugs and medicines, manufacture of office computing and accounting machinery, and manufacture of radio, television, and communication equipment. These are sectors with higher than average sunk costs in terms of advertising expenditure.     

CHANGING PATTERNS OF REGIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE: The Case of Canada Under NAFTA

Recently, the issue of regional and international trade flows has attracted increased attention. Papers by Helliwell and McCallum have stressed the importance of national borders in determining the nature of Canadian economic activity even when adjustments are made for distance and trade barriers. This article, using Provincial Economic Accounts data, estimates an almost ideal demand system to explain the interprovincial and international flow of goods, accounting for changes in relative prices and other factors that have arisen since the formation of NAFTA. The results allow conclusions to be drawn with respect to the importance of geographical proximity to the U.S. border, the influence of price and income elasticities, and the nature of the industrial/resource endowment mix of the province. The relevant elasticities allow for the examination changes to the internal and external trade patterns and to the differences which have developed in the various regions of Canada.