Globalization and imperfect labor market sorting

This paper focuses on the ability of the labor market to efficiently match heterogeneous workers to jobs within a given industry and the role that globalization plays in that process. Using matched worker–firm data from Sweden, we find strong evidence that openness improves the matching between workers and firms in industries with greater comparative advantage. This suggests that there may be significant gains from globalization that have not been identified in the past — globalization may improve the efficiency of the matching process in the labor market. These results remain unchanged after adding controls for technical change at the industry level or measures of domestic anti-competitive regulations and product market competition. Our results are also robust to alternative measures of the degree of matching, openness, and the trade status of an industry.     

Globalization and firm level adjustment with imperfect labor markets

In a model with search generated unemployment and heterogeneity on both sides of the labor market, exporting firms are bigger and pay higher wages than other firms. Moreover, there is imperfect persistence in the decision to export and liberalization increases the wage gap between high- and low-skill workers. Openness can increase aggregate productivity in export-oriented markets while generating within-firm productivity losses for the weakest firms. In contrast, openness can lead to within-firm productivity gains for the weakest firms in import-competing industries.     

全球化视角下的中欧贸易争端及其博弈分析——以纺织品为例

欧盟已经并将继续成为对华贸易摩擦的首要发起国,中欧双方在贸易争端中考虑的第一影响变量就是经济全球化。全球化使贸易争端具有了不可避免性和可协调性,并为其提供了动态变化机制,进而使其成为一场欧盟占主动的完全信息动态博弈。近期的纺织品贸易磨擦就是一个明证,我国在博弈中只能也必须积极应对,并力争促成由被动向主动地位的转变,即我国在短期内要尽快建立成熟的争端应对机制,长期则要逐步促成比较优势的全球实现和动态升级。     

Delay and dynamics in labor market adjustment: Simulation results

We simulate numerically a trade model with labor mobility costs added, modeled in such a way as to generate gross flows in excess of net flows. Adjustment to a trade shock can be slow with plausible parameter values. In our base case, the economy moves 95% of the distance to the new steady state in approximately eight years. Gross flows have a large effect on this rate of adjustment and on the normative effects of trade. Announcing and delaying the liberalization can build – or destroy – a constituency for free trade. We study the conditions under which these contrasting outcomes occur.     

Anonymous market and group ties in international trade

History provides many examples of cohesive groups dispersed over several countries who exploit the ties between their members to gain entry into foreign markets. The phenomenon is well-established empirically and noteworthy because it suggests the importance of informational barriers in international transactions. We present a simple model where output is produced through a joint venture, and agents have complete information domestically but are unable to judge the quality of their match abroad. A minority of individuals, otherwise identical to all others, can exploit complete information in international matches between group members, if they so choose. Group ties increase aggregate trade and income, but hurt the anonymous market because they deprive it disproportionately of the group’s more productive members.     

Globalization and the ‘confidence game’

We show that governments in developing countries have an incentive to play the “confidence game” — wherein the need to win the confidence of the international capital market ‘can actually prevent a country from following otherwise sensible policies and force it to follow policies that it would normally consider perverse’. This incentive arises because of a combination of a ‘conformity bias’ and ‘good news bias’ in governmental decision making in an open economy, which results in inefficient outcomes which increases rather than decreases the threat of devaluation. While institutions that encourage greater transparency and the public revelation of information, may often mitigate this inefficiency, on some occasions increased transparency may even exacerbate the inefficiency.     

FDI in post-production services and product market competition

Post-production services, such as sales, distribution, and maintenance, comprise a crucial element of business activity. We explore an international duopoly model in which a foreign firm has the option of outsourcing post-production services to its domestic rival or providing those services by establishing its own facilities through FDI. We demonstrate that trade liberalization in goods may hurt domestic consumers and lower world welfare, and that the negative welfare impacts are turned into positive ones if service FDI is also liberalized. This finding yields important policy implications, given the reality that the progress of liberalization in service sectors is still limited.     

Evaluating the foreign ownership wage premium using a difference-in-differences matching approach

This paper seeks to identify the causal effect of foreign acquisitions on wages of skilled and unskilled workers, using difference-in-differences propensity score matching estimators. Our results suggest that there is substantial heterogeneity in the post-acquisition wage effect depending on the nationality of the foreign acquirer and the skill group of workers. We find sizable post acquisition wage effects on skilled and unskilled wages following an acquisition by a US firm. No such impacts result from acquisitions by EU multinationals. Also we discern some positive wage effects for unskilled workers resulting from acquisitions by multinationals from the rest of the world.     

中国参与区域贸易安排:经济影响与国际比较

在多边贸易谈判进展缓慢的背景下,区域贸易安排已经成为推动贸易自由化的一条战略途径.世纪之交,我国开始积极参与各种区域贸易安排,显示出我国在推动全球贸易自由化中的积极立场.其中,农产品的贸易安排成为我国参与的一大特点.     

Globalization and specialization

The popular Dixit–Stiglitz–Ethier framework proposes that globalization increases the menu of intermediate goods available to downstream firms and that gains from specialization raise welfare unambiguously. This study shows that both results depend critically on the assumption that demand elasticities are invariable. The more general framework presented here provides two main insights: First, whether specialization rises or falls depends ultimately on the shape of the cost function, and second, globalization can actually reduce welfare in the case when specialization falls.     

Response rates in international mail surveys: Results of a 22-country study

Researchers embarking on their first international mail survey find very little guidance in the present academic literature. In 1988, two articles were published in the fall issue of the Journal of International Business Studies that claimed that: “at the moment the crossnational researcher has very little evidence upon which to base his judgments about [mail] survey design” [Jobber and Saunders (1988) An experimental investigation into cross-national mail survey response rates, Journal of International Business Studies19, 488] and “Literature concerned with response rates from industrial samples drawn from multiple countries is nearly absent” [Dawson and Dickinson (1988) Conducting international mail surveys: the effect of incentives on response rates within an industrial population, Journal of International Business Studies19, 492]. Unfortunately, not much has changed since. Still, very little is known about how respondents from different countries react to mail surveys. This article intends to fill part of this gap by describing the results of a large scale international mail survey in 22 countries. Response rates are shown to vary considerably across countries in a way that contradicts much of the earlier (American) research on this subject. Several explanations for these differences in response rates are put forward.     

全球化视野下的重庆市对外开放战略

全球化为重庆加快对外开放发展提供了重要的历史性机遇。重庆市作为我国中西部地区的唯一直辖市和长江上游的经济中心,承担着国家发展战略的枢纽与传递功能,这一功能内在地要求将重庆市对外开放的战略目标定位为内陆型国际化大都市;重庆市作为内陆型的国际化大都市,基本特征是内陆型的地域特征、国际化的本质要求、大都市的建管及运营视野;重庆市建设成为内陆型国际化大都市的基本条件已经具备,在全球营销重庆市尤显迫切。     

反倾销:当代显性贸易摩擦主要表现形式的原因分析

本文根据贸易摩擦表现的形式和发生的可能性,将贸易摩擦分为显性贸易摩擦和隐性贸易摩擦,并对当前显性贸易摩擦主要表现为反倾销形式的原因进行分析,指出贸易摩擦是贸易自由化的伴生物,是不可避免的;当前贸易摩擦主要表现为反倾销是由反倾销规则本身的很多特点决定的,并且在短时间内不会改变.     

Business School Partnerships for Globalization

International partnerships are an essential tool to enable business schools to internationalize their activities. They can lead to improved research, better more internationally relevant teaching, provide staff with an international perspective, and help prepare students for careers in global business. Using case studies of four of Durham University Business School's main partnerships, the article identifies the motivations for forming partnerships, examines some of the practical management issues associated with partnership working in higher education, and details the many benefits that can be derived from such arrangements.     

再论“国际贸易的全成本”

从内涵看,"国际贸易的全成本"是某种物品的产权在跨国转移中,发生于国际贸易过程,进而涉及生产和消费、经济和生态、今人和后人,使用一切资源要素的代价总和;从外延看,"国际贸易的全成本"是以国际贸易中的生产成本、交易成本、环境成本和代际成本等为子系统的动态开放系统。其中,使用劳动、资本、土地等传统要素的机会成本为生产成本;使用制度要素的机会成本为交易成本;使用生态环境要素的机会成本为环境成本;耗费"可持续性"要素的机会成本为代际成本。贸易理论和现实的发展表明,国际贸易的动因是比较优势,比较优势的本质是比较成本优势,它反映了不同国家同种产品的机会成本差异。比较优势理论的"硬核"在于"比较之比较",其"外围保护带"则表现为对资源要素和成本外延的界定。为化解比较优势理论面临的种种冲突和困境,有必要拓展它的成本观,使其成为进步而非退化的研究纲领。因此,使用或耗费广义要素而形成的"全成本"是一国参与国际分工和贸易的比较优势的基础。     

Corruption in international business

I analyze corruption in international business, presenting a critical assessment of the topic and providing suggestions for future research. I argue that corruption creates a laboratory for expanding international business studies because its illegal nature, the differences in perception about illegality, and the variation in the enforcement of laws against bribery across countries challenge some of the assumptions upon which arguments have been built, i.e., that managers can choose appropriate actions without major legal implications. Hence, I first provide suggestion for how to analyze the topic of corruption in future studies by analyzing the types, measures, causes, consequences, and controls of corruption. I then provide suggestions for how to extend leading theories of the firm by using corruption as a laboratory that challenges some of the assumptions of these theories: extending agency theory by analyzing the existence of unethical agency relationships; extending transaction cost economics by analyzing illegal transaction costs minimization; extending the resource-based view by studying corporate social irresponsibility capability; extending resource dependency by analyzing the ethical power escape; and extending neo-institutional theory by studying illegal legitimacy.     

服务国际化的内涵及动因分析

20世纪90年代以来,全球经济竞争的焦点正从货物贸易转向服务贸易,服务业国际直接投资迅速增长,服务呈现出强劲的国际化趋势。本文分析了服务国际化的内涵和主体,重点探讨了促进服务国际化发展的外部环境因素和服务企业国际化的微观动因。     

Globalization and school enrollment in a panel of countries

As the process of globalization has gained momentum in the past few decades, so too has interest in the effects of globalization on various socioeconomic outcomes grown. In this paper, I investigate the relationship between globalization and primary school enrollment. Both the economic globalization and social globalization measures from the KOF Index of Globalization are utilized in the analysis in order to capture the broad nature of globalization. The results of the panel data analysis indicate that there is a weak relationship between economic globalization and primary school enrollment, whereas the relationship between social globalization and primary school enrollment is both robust and highly significant. Examining the data by groups of countries indicates that relationship between economic globalization and school enrollment is positive and significant in Latin America and the Caribbean and in Asia, while it is weakly negative in Eastern Europe. The positive relationship between social globalization and school enrollment on the other hand is driven by countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and the Middle East and Africa.     

Globalization and domestic conflict

When a resource like oil is domestically contested, trade patters and welfare can be very different than when property rights are costlessly enforced. Whereas (small-country) importers of the contested resource gain unambiguously relative to autarky, exporters of the contested resource lose under free trade, unless the world price of the resource is sufficiently high. Regardless of what price obtains in world markets, countries tend to over-export the contested resource compared to the absence of conflict. For a wide range of prices, higher international prices of the contested resource reduce welfare, an instance of the “natural resource curse.”     

Globalization and economic development

A feature of the continuing integration of the world economy is the globalization of production and the consequent rise of trade in parts and components. Products are more internationalized and less identified with any particular country. Non-trivial shares of the value-added of many exports consist of imports and vice versa. Extension of the international division of labour beyond finished products offers developing countries a broader range of choices for industrialization. This paper explores the implications of these developments in the context of a standard trade model. Component specialization in a developing country's import sector is shown to be superior in overall welfare terms to specialization in the integrated product. Output and employment are higher in the sector, but the wage-rental ratio is lower.