The effect of within-country inequality on international trade and investment agreements

There is anecdotal evidence suggesting that those losing from globalization influence policy makers to decrease the openness of their countries to globalization, as evidenced by signing international trade and investment agreements. Surprisingly, this influence has never been examined empirically. This study provides novel empirical evidence demonstrating that greater within-country inequality, our proxy for 'perceived losses' from globalization, decreases countries' propensity to sign regional trade and investment agreements. Our findings support the argument that the existence of 'losers' from globalization can be detrimental for continued globalization. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first extensive econometric empirical evidence of the influence of within-country inequality on countries' willingness to sign international trade and investment agreements, as means to increase their global economic integration.     

Costly investment and complementarities in an international trade model with directed technological change

We investigate the impacts on the skill premium and on economic growth in an innovator‐imitator general equilibrium growth model assuming: (a) directed technological change; (b) international trade of intermediate goods; (c) internal costly investment in both physical capital and R&D; and (d) complementarities between intermediate goods in aggregate production. With trade of intermediate goods, the complementarities degree and investment costs influence the economic growth of both countries, but do not affect the countries' skill premia, which are directed by technological knowledge. Additionally, in agreement with related empirical literature, openness to trade of intermediate goods leads to a higher equilibrium skill premium in both countries, whereas its impact on the common growth rate can vary in sign.     

A knowledge-and-physical-capital model of international trade flows, foreign direct investment, and multinational enterprises

This paper addresses two important issues at the nexus of the literatures on international trade, foreign direct investment (FDI), foreign affiliate sales (FAS), and multinational enterprises (MNEs). First, the introduction of a third internationally-mobile factor (physical capital) to the standard 2 × 2 × 2 “knowledge-capital” model of MNEs with skilled and unskilled labor allows us to resolve fairly readily the puzzle in the modern MNE literature that foreign affiliate sales among two identical economies completely displace their international trade. Intra-industry trade and intra-industry FDI (and FAS) can coexist for national and multinational firms (with identical productivities) in identical countries. Second, the introduction also of a third country to the model suggests a formal N-country theoretical rationale for estimating gravity equations of bilateral FDI flows and FAS, in a manner consistent with estimating gravity equations for bilateral trade flows.     

浅谈技术性贸易壁垒与中国的国际贸易

在经济全球化，国际贸易日趋激烈化的趋势下，科技日新月异，同时也随之产生了国际贸易中的又一重要手段一技术性贸易壁垒(Technical Barriers to Trade—TBT)。所谓技术性贸易壁垒，是指一国以维护国家安全，或保护人类健康和安全，保护动植物的生命和健康，保护生念环境，或防止欺诈行为，保证产品质量为由，采取一些强制性或非强制性的技术性措施，这     

Education, trade and investment liberalizations

Empirical evidence suggests a two-way causality between skilled labor and inward direct investment. I construct a general equilibrium model that allows for endogenous firm and plant-location decisions and the endogenous accumulation of skilled labor. I examine the effect of an education subsidy when trade is liberalized and investment is restricted and vice versa. For an initially skilled-labor-scarce country, I show that an education subsidy under investment liberalization can jump the economy to a high-level equilibrium, and that it may be possible to remove the subsidy completely and remain at the superior equilibrium.     

Investment liberalization and international trade

This paper estimates the cross-price elasticity of exports with respect to investment costs for bilateral relations between 36 countries. We show that the effect of reducing foreign direct investment costs on exports depends on country characteristics and trade costs as predicted by the [Markusen, 1997] and [Markusen, 2002] model. When countries differ in relative factor endowments and trade costs are low, investment liberalization stimulates exports, whereas when countries are similar in terms of relative factor endowments and size, and trade costs are moderate to high, investment liberalization reduces exports.     

The trade comovement puzzle and the margins of international trade

Countries that trade more with each other tend to have more strongly correlated business cycles. Yet, traditional international business cycle models predict a much weaker link between trade and business cycle comovement. We propose that fluctuations in the number of varieties embedded in trade flows may drive the observed comovement by increasing the correlation among trading partners' aggregate productivity. Our hypothesis is that business cycles should be more strongly correlated between countries that trade a wider variety of goods. We find empirical support for this hypothesis. After decomposing trade into its extensive and intensive margins, we find that the extensive margin explains most of the trade–productivity and trade–output comovement. This result is striking because the extensive margin accounts for only a fourth of the variability in total trade. We then develop a two-country model with heterogeneous firms, endogenous entry, and fixed export costs, in which the aggregate productivity correlation increases with trade in varieties. A numerical exercise shows that our proposed mechanism increases business cycle synchronization compared with the levels predicted by traditional models.     

Dynamics and objectives of international trade

Standard international trade models universally consider maximizing the availability of inexpensive goods as the objective of international trade. They then go on to show that tariffs and other impediments to trade cause a loss of economic efficiency. Fewer goods are available in the trading nations because of the impediments. The common method of analysis is to use price / quantity curves and two-nation / two-product curves.

Here we show that international trade is far more complex. It is a vast network beyond our present ability to accurately model. It can, however, be structured as a linear program. As a linear program it has many of the characteristics of a network. The chief difference is that linear programs provide static analysis. The world trade network is dynamic. However, by structuring it as a linear program, many of the components of international trade omitted by price/ quantity and two-nation / two-product analysis can be incorporated.

An important part of any programming analysis is determination of the objective function. Several objective functions are examined, particularly with respect to employment impacts. A variable compensatory tax (VCT) is selected as a means of dealing with the dynamics and complexity of international trade. It has the potential to repatriate 6 million jobs, is simple to implement, precludes retaliation, and would bring U.S. trade into a permanent balance of ± 5%.     

不可替代的国际商展

今天的外贸与10年前有何不同？几乎没有异议,电子商务（E—commerce）的应用是近年来发生的最大变化。当电子商务成为趋势时,电子商务就成为外贸曲折的路径中最短的那条。     

Financing international trade transactions

International trade transactions present unique commercial and legal risks, and hence specialized forms of financing are required.     

A new chance for trade and investment

International investment flows have increased rapidly with the growing globalization of markets and production. These flows will be of greatest benefit to the world economy as a whole if they can be based on a transparent and predictable system of generally recognized rules. What strategy should the EU adopt to help create those rules? *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A02GP103 00002     

Safety risk and international investment decisions

We identify and demonstrate the merit of a novel institutional factor, safety risk, which likely affects multinational corporations’ (MNCs’) international investment decisions. Safety risk refers to the extent to which security and physical well-being are endangered due to normalized aggression and criminality in society. Despite concerns from executives and policymakers, safety risk has attracted little research attention. We validate a safety risk measure and evaluate the construct’s effect on MNCs’ investments. The findings indicate that countries’ safety risk deters MNCs from investing. Further, in post hoc analyses, firms’ prior experiences with safety risk and countries’ private security investments moderated this relationship.     

EC agricultural policy and international trade

The world markets for agricultural products are in a state of crisis. This is manifested in phenomena such as record surpluses, falling incomes for farmers and constantly increasing agricultural expenditure in a number of industrial countries while, at the same time, people go hungry in many developing regions. What are the factors which have brought this situation about? What can be done to solve these problems?     

试论服务贸易在国际贸易中的发展趋势

随着产品生产、销售的进一步全球化,资本也更加国际化,服务也将进一步全球化。先进的信息技术的发展与应用也必将进一步对服务贸易的发展带来巨大的深刻的影响,国际服务贸易的发展与国际物资贸易的发展相辅相成,在技术和全球化力量的推动下,国际服务贸易出现了新的发展趋势。