International Trade and Growth Miracles: the Implications of Nonhomothetic Preferences

If the rate of saving increases with income then a low per capita level of the capital stock may be self‐sustaining. In these circumstances international trade may allow an economy to quickly increase its per capita capital stock in a self‐reinforcing “growth miracle” process. A labor‐abundant economy trading with a capital‐abundant economy will see its wage rate rise relative to autarky. This rise in the wage rate also increases the savings rate and so raises the following period’s per capita capital stock. In this way a low‐income economy may exhibit large and permanent increases in its level of GDP per capita after opening its markets to international trade.     

FACTOR ENDOWMENTS, TRADE LIBERALIZATION, AND THE FUTURE OF APEC TRADE PATTERNS

The heads of state of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) nations have committed member nations to remove all barriers to trade both among themselves and with respect to the rest of the world by 2020. The present paper uses a simple econometric model of bilateral trade flows based on country size, relative factor endowments, and trade barriers of importing as well as exporting countries to estimate the shares by country of origin in imports of each of the 16 major APEC countries and the rest of the world for each of 45 commodity groups comprising world trade in commodities. The estimates reveal that APEC trade would be expanded by 13% with complete liberalization of tariff barriers, by an additional 5% if nontariff barriers are also removed, and by another 4% if the rest of the world would also remove all barriers to trade. Variants on this base scenario show that such trade expansion could be substantially reduced were trade liberalization, capital growth, or both to be reduced in the countries affected by the Asian financial crisis. ( JEL Fl, F17)     

Trade Liberalisation, Closer Economic Relations and Intra-Industry Specialisation

Abstract
Much of the growth in trade among the industrialised countries, and more recently among countries in the Asia-Pacific region, has taken the form of intra-industry trade (HT). Australia has historically had one of the lowest shares of IIT among OECD countries. This article examines how Australia's IIT has changed in the 1980s in response to the process of trade liberalisation and completion of the Closer Economic Relations (CER) pact with New Zealand. HT indexes are estimated for Australia's multilateral and trans-Tasman trade for 1981 and 1991 for 132 industries using data at the 3 and 4-digit level of the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC). The results point to a sharp increase in the share of IIT for both multilateral and trans-Tasman trade. Industries that have undergone the largest reductions in protection levels have increased their shares of IIT quite considerably. Increased intra-industry specialisation suggests that the short-run adjustment costs associated with trade liberalisation are likely to be lower. If IIT continues to grow in response to the ongoing process of internationalisation of the Australian economy, then Australia's prospects for expanding its share of world trade are good.     

The impact of China’s WTO accession on trade and economic relations across the Taiwan Strait

This paper evaluates the impact of China’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) accession on trade and economic relations across the Taiwan Strait and its implications for the rest of the world by a recursive dynamic, 17‐region, 25‐sector computable general equilibrium (CGE) model according to actual market access commitments that China and Taiwan have made to date. The simulation results show that both China and Taiwan will substantially benefit from their WTO memberships, and their economic interdependence and their dependence within the rest of the world will further deepen. The rest of the world may also benefit because of the expansion of world trade and improvement of their international terms of trade, but some developing countries with an endowment structure similar to China, like those in South America and Southeast Asia, may experience keener competition in labour‐intensive exports and lower prices for their products. JEL classification: F1, F02, C68, P52.     

对外贸易、金融改革和经济增长:来自中国的证据

本文根据技术扩散模型阐释,中国的技术进步取决于它对先进技术的吸收能力和可吸收的世界先进技术集合的乘积。金融改革通过消除经济扭曲提升我国的吸收能力。如果国际先进技术通过对外贸易扩散到中国,那么对外贸易和金融改革在增长中就存在相互促进的作用。利用中国改革开放后的数据,我们没有发现对外贸易(出口或进出口)和金融改革在促进经济增长中有显著的互补作用。该结论在控制条件收敛、其他经济增长因素、分省和时间效应后成立,并在解决贸易的内生性后仍然稳健。将该结论和我们已发现的金融改革和外商直接投资在促进经济增长中有显著的互补作用的结果相对照,可见,与国际贸易相比,国际先进技术更可能通过外商直接投资扩散到中国。     

The determination of union and non-union wage rates

If, in a partially unionised economy, union workers force up their absolute wage rate, how does this affect the wage paid in the non-union sector? This paper suggests a simple answer. First, in a small open economy a rise in the union wage will raise the non-union wage. Secondly, in a closed economy — or one with some monopoly power in world trade — a rise in the union wage seems likely to depress the non-union wage.     

扩大进口背景下中国进口对世界经济的影响——制造业就业的视角

伴随着中国经济的快速增长，中国在成为世界第一大出口国的同时也成为世界第二大进口国。以往对中国贸易的研究多是从供给端出发，然而从需求端来看，中国进口对世界经济的影响又有几何？本文在扩大进口战略背景下从全球制造业就业的视角对中国进口与世界经济的关系进行了实证分析，研究发现，通过对中国出口，相关国家的制造业就业实现正增长，但是两者关系会在不同贸易商品、经济发展程度和时间样本之间存在差异。在此基础上，本文进一步从就业创造和就业破坏等方面展开了机制分析。本文的研究表明，中国通过“世界市场”的角色在一定程度上降低了全球失业率，但同时也需警惕“进口竞争”对我国经济的影响。     

Distance measures between free trade and autarky for the world economy

We develop a methodology to determine numerically how globalized the world economy is. We present a global general equilibrium model capturing major OECD economies and a residual rest of world for which alternative metrics of distance between observed, free trade and autarky equilibria can be developed. We use data for 2000 and report a number of distance measures between the 2000 observed trade restricted equilibrium and both free trade and autarky equilibria noting the absence of prior literature on metrics of distance between equilibria. The measures are used to determine the degree to which the world economy is globalized.     

Implicit Mercantilism,Oligopoly, and Trade*

The authors propose a new model of trade between developing and advanced economies to capture the effects of important asymmetries in the organizations of their industries. This model demonstrates how the industrial structure of a developing economy can evolve to produce what the authors call “implicit mercantilism.” Free entry plus domestic oligopoly in a developing economy, when combined with competitive behavior in developed countries, generates several distinct stages of mercantilism hitherto unrecognized in the literature. Each stage has its own pattern of interaction with a competitive trading world. As the production costs and techniques of the mercantile society converge to world standards, its citizens will first lose from this progress, only later to gain. Both effects are due to certain relationships between home prices and world prices, newly identified in this paper. The analysis is particularly relevant to the structure of Asian economies, and to policy debates about their reform.     

Time Preference and Income Convergence in a Dynamic Heckscher–Ohlin Model

This paper shows that income convergence in an open‐economy setting hinges upon how the time discount rate of the households is determined. As opposed to the case of constant time discount rate where cross‐country income divergence may emerge, the small open economy may catch up with the rest of the world if the time discount rate increases with consumption. In contrast, if the time discount rate decreases with consumption, then the small open economy fails to catch up with the rest of the world under free trade of commodities.     

中国遭遇国际贸易摩擦的必然性与合理性研究

2008年全球性金融危机之后,贸易保护主义重新抬头,中国遭遇的国际贸易摩擦愈演愈烈。但是通过贸易理论分析和世界经济、中国经济的发展实践来看,中国遭遇国际贸易摩擦有其必然性和合理性,它是中国经济和对外贸易所处历史阶段下的必然产物,国际贸易摩擦有其存在的合理性。     

SIZE,OPENNESS, AND MACROECONOMIC INTERDEPENDENCE

One common, simplifying assumption in open economy macroliterature is that the rest of the world can be thought of as a representative economy. This article formally investigates conditions under which this assumption can be justified using a multicountry general equilibrium model as a laboratory. We derive the conditions that ensure the existence of the equilibrium and study the properties of the equilibrium using large N asymptotics. Thereby, we show that the two‐country framework is a valid approximation only for economies that have diversified trade linkages and only when there is no globally dominant economy among the foreign economies.     

Growth,expectations and tariffs

We present a growth model of international trade in which expectations about profitability and growth influence innovation and investment. Adaptive learning dynamics determine transition paths for countries with differing structural parameters. Countries limiting trade by tariffs on imports of capital goods can experience gains in growth and perceived utility for a finite time, whereas the rest of the world is adversely affected. Asymmetric gains persist longer when structural advantages of the country applying tariffs are larger. Substantial differences in levels of innovation, output and utility can appear within our asymmetric country setting.     

China’s economic reforms and growth prospects

Conventional wisdom attributes China’s rapid economic growth to its model of state capitalism, which combines direct state ownership of the commanding heights of the economy and indirect state control of the rest of the economy through industrial policies and the allocation of credit through state-owned banks. This article argues that China’s growth since 1978 is largely due to the result of the expanding role of markets and the rise of private business. If China systematically adopts the economic reform agenda endorsed by the Chinese Communist Party in the fall of 2013, it likely will avoid a sustained period of much slower growth that some have forecast.     

Openness and Growth in North Korea: Evidence from Time–Series Data

New growth theories suggest that an economy's increased openness raises domestic productivity, and hence must have a positive effect on the living standards of a nation. The North Korean economy, isolated from world trade for several decades and its economy devastated, provides a test for this implied causality. The possibility that the ultimate source of declining real gross national product since 1974 is a decrease in trade liberalization of the North Korean economy cannot be rejected. The results are more definitive when the sample is split into two subperiods, pre–1974 and post–1974. These findings are generally consistent with the conventional model in which free trade stimulates economic growth.     

The Transmission of Sustained Growth through the Terms of Trade in an Endogenous Growth Model

This paper develops a two‐country model of endogenous growth and international trade in intermediate goods. In autarky just one of the economies enjoys sustained growth. The trade situation may be characterized by complete specialization of both countries, or by incomplete specialization of the growing economy. In either case, trade transmits perpetual growth to the stagnant economy because of the permanent improvements in its terms of trade. The existence of a non‐reproducible factor in the growing economy is crucial to ensure propagation of growth. Moreover, under incomplete specialization countries converge in per capita income. This result relies on two assumptions. First, there must be a large enough share of world income to pay for the input in which the stagnant economy has comparative advantage. Second, all technologies producing intermediate goods should be equally intensive in the non‐reproducible factor.     

The future of the global economy

Although world growth is continuous throughout history, the balance of power is constantly shifting from one nation to another. From Egypt to Ancient Greece and Rome, all the way through modern western civilization, different nations struggle for power through various ways such as: war, science and technology, arts, commerce, economical transactions, and other forms of interaction.In this article we use the assumption that global activity, as measured by real GDP, follows the well known s-curve of natural growth. Furthermore in order to model the relative power of specific regions, namely Western Countries, China and the rest of the world, we use the Logistic Substitution method developed by Nakicenovic and Marchetti. Estimates from the derived models are tested against actual data and linked to real historical events where appropriate.The bottom line of these forecasts is that World GDP will continue to rise in the next years, and will probably reach its peak growth by the end of the next decade. China's emergence as a superpower is verified and could have been predicted even as way back as 1985 by using the Logistic Substitution method. If the current trend persists it is expected to more than double its percentage contribution to the World's gross domestic product during the next two decades and exceed Western Countries' aggregated GDP by 2034 at a level of almost 40%. By the year 2024 though China's economy is expected to enter the substitution phase, as our world will most likely experience the emergence of a new “superpower” that will take its place, and once more will change the international landscape as we know it today.     

North-South knowledge spillovers and competition: convergence versus divergence

Technology spillovers from high-productivity countries in the North allow low-productivity countries in the South to improve productivity in high-tech sectors relatively easy. However, the South's share in world goods markets for high-tech products is relatively low, which reduces opportunities for learning by doing. Our simple Ricardian endogenous growth model shows how the balance between toughness of competition in trade and the strength of North-South spillovers determines whether productivity levels diverge, partially converge or fully converge in the long run. If convergence prevails, the North is confronted with declining employment in high-tech sectors. Temporary (trade) policy measures can turn a diverging economy into a converging one.     

服务贸易自由化与中国应对策略的探析

服务贸易自由化是在服务贸易重要性显现以及全球经济一体化背景下提出的。随着国际服务贸易发展程度的深化,全球经济一体化进程的加快,以及《服务贸易总协定》的签订,服务贸易自由化可谓是大势所趋。这必将对世界各国服务贸易的发展和政府经济政策的制定产生众多深远的影响。服务贸易自由化既具有积极的经济效应,又具有一定的负面效应。作为既是发展中国家也是WTO成员方的中国,服务贸易自由化对我们来说是机遇也是挑战。我们必须要在这一趋势下认清中国服务贸易发展的现状,抓住机遇,并勇于迎接挑战,制定符合中国实际的应对策略,提高中国服务贸易的竞争力。     

Accounting for the China–US Trade Imbalance: An Ownership‐Based Approach

This paper focuses on measuring the trade imbalance between China and the United States (US) within the framework of the ownership‐based approach. It extends the baseline model developed, respectively, by NAS, Julius, and BEA into a three‐country framework, consisting of the domestic economy, the foreign economy, and the rest of the world. The results of the study show that the non‐US foreign direct investment in China is mostly responsible for China's trade surplus with the US. As a result, China's ownership‐based trade surplus is surprisingly small relative to the conventional measure.