Estimating Trade Mis-invoicing from China： 2000-2005

An examination of available data reveals large trade misinvoicing between China and its trade partners. The analysis finds a net trade misinvoicing of US$287.6bn between 2000 and 2005, while the full magnitude of unrecorded trade is estimated at US$1.4tn. China needs to establish more effective management of its international trade flows. At the same time, the international community needs to provide more effective governance mechanisms to address trade misinvoicing.     

Does a Country's Openness to Trade and Capital Accounts Lead to Financial Development? Evidence from Malaysia*

This paper examines the role of trade openness and capital account openness in influencing financial development in Malaysia. The empirical findings using the bounds testing approach demonstrate that trade openness and capital account openness are positively significant determinants of financial development. However, there is no empirical support of the hypothesis that the simultaneous opening of both trade and capital accounts is necessary for financial development to take place. The evidence is valid for three banking sector development and two stock market development indicators.     

Trade openness and air pollution: City-level empirical evidence from China

We seek to contribute to the debate over trade openness and the environment by taking specific account of the endogeneity of trade openness. We use exogenous geographic determinants of trade as instrumental variables as well as distance to Huai River for identification which is based on China's heating policy. Using air quality measure from NASA, we find that trade increases three measures of air pollution: SO₂, NO₂, and Aerosol concentration.     

资本账户开放风险与对策研究

伴随着经济金融全球化推进,资本账户开放已成为一个国家在推动经济发展和强化对外交流中不可或缺的关键环节。但资本账户开放往往也会给开放国的金融秩序、货币汇率、对外贸易造成一定风险和挑战。本文指出资本账户开放可能导致开放国短期宏观经济过热、投机资本过度涌入等问题,并有针对性地提出保持稳定连续的宏观经济政策、实行富有弹性的汇率政策等对策。     

Openness and income disparities: does trade explain the “Mezzogiorno effect”?

We use Italian regional data to answer the question whether trade affects within-country income differentials. In Italy, the more affluent Northern regions trade more with the rest of the world than the poorer ones in the Southern “Mezzogiorno” regions. Prima facie, there is a positive correlation between external trade and per capita income. Studying this relationship empirically requires taking into account the endogenous component of trade. We argue that panel cointegration models can complement instrumental variables techniques to account for the endogeneity of trade in a panel context. Both methods show a positive link between trade openness and the level of income per capita.     

贸易开放、人力资本与全要素生产率的动态关系——基于非参数Malmquist指数与VAR方法

本文采用Malmquist指数对我国1981～2006年的全要素生产率变动情况进行了估算,在此基础上,通过建立VAR模型进一步分析了贸易开放、人力资本与我国全要素生产率变动之间的相互关系。结果表明:(1)贸易开放对我国全要素生产率增长具有积极的影响,但这种影响在短期内难以实现,更多的是表现为一种长期趋势过程;(2)全要素生产率增长对贸易开放将产生同步的和持久的积极影响;(3)人力资本积累除了对全要素生产率的增长有贡献之外,还能对贸易开放具有积极促进作用。     

城镇化、贸易开放影响经济增长的差异性研究——基于面板数据FMOLS的再思考

文章以城镇化、贸易开放和经济增长为研究对象,运用协整检验和完全修正的最小二乘法（FMOLS）对我国省际面板数据进行实证分析,表明：我国的城镇化、贸易开放与经济增长之间存在着长期稳定的面板协整关系;城镇化和贸易开放对经济增长都有促进作用,但作用力度有差异;城镇化是经济增长的Granger原因,而贸易开放不是经济增长的Granger原因。     

The effect of financial deepening on inequality: Some international evidence

This paper uses an unbalanced panel data analysis of 126 countries for the period 1963–2002 to analyze the effects of financial deepening on inequality. The principal findings can be summarized as follows: (1) financial deepening reduces inequality; (2) economic growth reduces the equalizing effects of financial deepening; (3) inequality increases with an increase in trade openness; (4) the disequalizing effects of trade openness decrease as a country grows; (5) financial deepening and trade openness therefore have asymmetric effects on inequality; and (6) these effects are robust to the choice of financial variables, inequality measures, and model specifications.     

Bilateral Trade, Openness, and Asset Holdings

This paper analyzes the relationship between bilateral trade flows, trade openness, and asset holdings in a three-country stochastic general equilibrium model. The three-country model set-up enables me to disentangle the effects of bilateral trade flows and trade openness on bilateral portfolio patterns. I find that both factors independently influence bilateral asset holdings. Higher bilateral trade as well as higher trade openness lead to a higher bilateral foreign asset position. Furthermore, the model shows an interaction effect between these two factors, where increasing trade openness reduces the influence of bilateral trade flows on asset holdings. I provide supporting empirical evidence for these theoretical findings using a data set on the geographical composition of international portfolio holdings.     

高端装备制造品出口复杂度及其影响因素研究--基于新兴经济体与发达经济体的比较分析

本文对新兴经济体和发达经济体高端装备制造品出口复杂度及其影响因素进行比较研究。从出口复杂度现状来看,当前发达经济体高端装备制造品出口复杂度较高,新兴经济体与其存在差距;不同行业的竞争态势存在差别,智能制造装备行业差距最大,其他行业差距较小。出口复杂度影响因素分析结果表明,发达经济体高端装备制造品出口复杂度主要受人均资本、贸易开放度和政府治理效力的正向推动,而新兴经济体受自然资源租金、科技研发和贸易开放度变量的正向影响更显著,行业间的差别使得相关影响因素的差异作用更明显。中国及主要新兴经济体应借鉴发达经济体的先进经验,从重点产业发展、基础要素投入、科研投入与人力资本协调、开放合作关系巩固等方面着手,提升产业竞争优势。     

Does the internet generate economic growth,international trade,or both?

Recent cross country panel data studies find a positive impact of internet use on economic growth and a positive impact of internet use on trade. The present study challenges the first finding by showing that internet use does not explain economic growth directly in a fully specified growth model. In particular openness to international trade variables seem to be highly correlated with internet use and the findings in the literature that internet use causes trade is confirmed here suggesting that internet use impacts trade and that trade impacts economic growth. A simultaneous equations model confirms the positive and significant role of internet use to openness and the importance of openness to economic growth. Internet use shows to be more impacting trade in non-high income countries than in high income countries whereas the impact of trade on economic growth is the same for both income groups.     

The financial integration of China: New evidence on temporally aggregated data for the A-share market

In the presence of de jure capital account inconvertibility, but in spite of high trade openness of China, existing empirical work, using daily data, has not found any evidence of international financial integration of its A-share market. In this paper we shed new light on this issue, examining a long sample of active trading, over 1992–2005, within the framework of a regime-switching error correction model, with a major focus on the role of temporal aggregation. With end-of-week closing prices we do not find any long run relationship between the Shanghai market and either the New York or the Hong Kong market, thus replicating previous findings. However, with weekly-averaged indices, up to late 1996, the Shanghai index was cointegrated with the S&P 500. Subsequently, this relationship broke down and a long run relationship with the Hang Seng index gradually arose. Information flows, as well as the prospects of de jure financial opening, and the growing awareness of valuation concepts among Chinese domestic investors, in the presence of identical fundamentals (multiple listing of Mainland firms), help explain the evidence of long run financial integration in spite of capital controls.     

Institutional Quality and CO2 Emission–Trade Relations: Evidence from Sub‐Saharan Africa

This paper examines the roles of trade, institutional quality and their interactions in explaining carbon dioxide emissions in a panel sample of 40 Sub‐Sahara African countries using the system generalised method of moments. We find that institutional reforms are unequivocally environmental improving. Meanwhile, the impacts of trade on the environment tend to depend on the institutional setting of a country. More specifically, trade openness is harmful to the environment in countries with low institutional quality and beneficial to the environment in countries with high institutional quality. This means that institutional reforms are a perquisite for the countries with low institutional quality to actualise the beneficial environment effect of trade. As for the countries with adequate institutional quality, trade and institutions are reinforcing each other in bringing down pollution. From these results, we conclude that trade openness implemented in a sound institutional setting potentially brings better trade, more growth and better environment.     

Intra-Industry Trade Revisited: A Note

This short note revisits the relative importance of intra- and inter-industry trade by using the Grubel-Lloyd formula as a measure of intra-industry trade to the country??s manufacturing trade (sections 5?C8 of the SITC) where each industry is the four digit classification. Measures for a country??s total trade, as well as its bilateral trade with specific countries are utilized. The results demonstrate that intra-industry trade dominates trade among the OECD countries, while inter-industry trade dominates North-South and South-South trade.     

International trade and economic growth: evidence from a panel ARDL-PMG approach

The purpose of this work is to study the impact of trade openness on the economic growth of the countries bordering the Mediterranean using a panel of eight countries from 1975 to 2016. We apply ARDL panel which is a technique recently developed. We study the effects of openness to international trade on economic growth while incorporating economic policy variables. The results show that the variables of commercial and financial openness favor economic growth. The free trade agreements that the European Union has signed with certain countries in the Mediterranean basin are designed above all to encourage greater regional economic integration and an increase in their potential growth. Therefore, our findings show that the financial sector is slow to affect economic growth in these countries. This study reveals that human capital and the investment rate support the economic growth of our sample. In addition, we conclude that a process of economic convergence has begun in these countries. A causal analysis was carried out we found an unidirectional causality ranging from economic growth to trade openness.

     

贸易开放、投资效率与中国的经济增长——基于“Krueger-Bhagwati”范式的经验研究

本文采取以制度分析为基础的"Krueger—Bhagwati"范式作为理论依托,以Dollar系数作为衡量贸易开放度的指标,对1953~2004年中国贸易开放与经济增长之间的关系进行了回归分析。结果显示,贸易开放促进经济增长的机制在于消除国内市场价格扭曲,减少非生产性寻利行为,提高了投资效率。同时,中国的确存在出口导向型增长,但这种增长方式为满足国外部门需求而挤压国内消费,容易产生经济波动。因此,对进出口采取一致激励的中性贸易体制是现阶段更为理想的体制选择。     

Heterogeneous Productivity and the Gains from Trade and FDI

Nontraded goods account for a major share of GDP in most economies, but have not been incorporated in the welfare analysis of monopolistic-competition models with heterogeneous productivity. This paper extends Helpman, Melitz and Yeaple (American Economic Review 94(1):300–316, 2004) to explore welfare effects in the presence of a nontraded good. We derive new analytical results about how the gains from trade and FDI are determined and affected by key parameters in the case of symmetric countries. The model is calibrated to a country group that includes all major developed countries. The gains from openness (trade and FDI) are found to be substantial (between 3.24 and 6.27 per cent of income) even if nontraded goods represent a major part of the economy. Most of these gains are attributed to trade rather than FDI.     

Measurement of Capital Flight: Methodology and Results for Sub‐Saharan African Countries*

Abstract: This paper presents the methodology for the computation of capital flight and reports new estimates of the magnitude and timing of capital flight from 33 sub‐Saharan African countries from 1970 to 2004. Our methodology calculates capital flight as the residual difference between inflows and outflows of foreign exchange recorded in the balance of payments, with corrections for the magnitude of external borrowing, trade misinvoicing, and unrecorded remittances. We find that total capital flight from these countries in this period amounted to $443 billion (in 2004 dollars). With imputed interest earnings, the accumulated stock of flight capital amounted to $640 billion. These numbers exceed these countries’ external debts, which in 2004 amounted to $193 billion, indicating that sub‐Saharan Africa is a net creditor to the rest of the world.     

The impact of MERCOSUR on trade of Brazilian states

We consider the impact of MERCOSUR on trade among Brazilian states and on trade by Brazilian states with MERCOSUR and the rest of the world. We use a theoretically founded gravity model to shed light on MERCOSUR??s possible creation and diversion effects as well as its ??preference erosion?? effect on trade among Brazilian states. Using data on interstate trade over a 4-year period, including 1?year prior to the MERCOSUR period (1991), we deliver empirical evidence at state level with a focus on the impact of MERCOSUR which can vary across Brazilian regions. We show that MERCOSUR increased Brazilian states?? trade with member countries, but had no effect on either interstate trade or Brazilian states?? trade with third countries. The paper finds that MERCOSUR??s impact varies across Brazilian regions and that Center West region did not benefit from the integration to MERCOSUR. We use an estimation method dealing better with the traditional issue of zero trade values and heteroskedasticity than ordinary least squares does.     

What Determines Financial Development? Culture,Institutions or Trade

This paper endeavours to determine in how far theories emphasising cultural values, dysfunctional institutions or impediments to trade can explain the vast differences in the size of financial systems across the globe. To account for endogeneity, an instrumental variables approach is pursued. For a cross-section of countries, we find that trade openness and institutions constraining the political elite from expropriating financiers tend to promote financial development. Conversely, there is only limited evidence that cultural beliefs and the cost of enforcing financial contracts significantly hamper financial development. JEL no.  F36, G2, O16