The effect of WTO on the extensive and the intensive margins of trade

We use 6-digit bilateral trade data to document the effect of WTO/GATT membership on the extensive and intensive product margins of trade. We construct gravity equations for the two product margins motivated by Chaney (2008). The empirical results show that standard gravity variables provide good explanatory power for bilateral trade on both margins. Importantly, we show that the impact of the WTO is concentrated almost exclusively on the extensive product margin of trade, i.e. trade in goods that were not previously traded. In our preferred specification, WTO membership increases the extensive margin of exports by 25%. At the same time, WTO membership has a negative impact on the intensive margin. Based on novel comparative statics results about how fixed and variable trade costs impact the product margins of trade, our results suggest that WTO membership works by reducing primarily the fixed rather than the variable costs of trade.     

Estimating the effects of free trade agreements on international trade flows using matching econometrics

This paper provides the first cross-section estimates of long-run treatment effects of free trade agreements on members' bilateral international trade flows using (nonparametric) matching econometrics. Our nonparametric cross-section estimates of ex post long-run treatment effects are much more stable across years and have more economically plausible values than corresponding OLS cross-section estimates from typical gravity equations. We provide plausible estimates of the long-run effects of membership in the original European Economic Community (EEC) and the Central American Common Market (CACM) between 1960 and 2000 and the estimates confirm anecdotal reports of these agreements' effectiveness.     

The WTO trade effect

This paper re-examines the GATT/WTO membership effect on bilateral trade flows, using nonparametric methods including pair-matching, permutation tests, and a Rosenbaum (2002) sensitivity analysis. Together, these methods provide an estimation framework that is robust to misspecification bias, allows general forms of heterogeneous membership effects, and addresses potential hidden selection bias. This is in contrast to most conventional parametric studies on this issue. Our results suggest large GATT/WTO trade-promoting effects that are robust to various restricted matching criteria, alternative GATT/WTO indicators, non-random incidence of positive trade flows, inclusion of multilateral resistance terms, and different matching methodologies.     

The elasticity of trade: Estimates and evidence

Quantitative results from a large class of structural gravity models of international trade depend critically on the elasticity of trade with respect to trade frictions. We develop a new simulated method of moments estimator to estimate this elasticity from disaggregate price and trade-flow data and we use it within Eaton and Kortum's (2002) Ricardian model. We apply our estimator to disaggregate price and trade-flow data for 123 countries in the year 2004. Our method yields a trade elasticity of roughly four, nearly fifty percent lower than Eaton and Kortum's (2002) approach. This difference doubles the welfare gains from international trade.     

Trade policy of a free trade agreement in the presence of foreign lobbying

This paper studies the effect of foreign lobbies on trade policy of a country which is a member of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). It uses a monopolistically competitive political economy model in which the government determines external tariffs endogenously. The effect of foreign lobbying under the FTA is examined empirically using Canadian industry-level trade data that allow differentiating of lobby groups by the country of origin. The analysis suggests that the presence of foreign lobbying has a significant effect on the domestic trade policy. The heterogeneity of foreign lobbies is also important: the presence of an organized lobbying group in an FTA partner country tends to raise trade barriers while an organized lobbying group of exporters from outside of the FTA is associated with less protection.     

Efficient barriers to trade: A sequential trade model with heterogeneous agents

This paper studies the choice of tariffs and other type of consumption taxes and subsidies in a flexible price version of the Prescott [Prescott, Edward C., 1975. Efficiency of the Natural Rate. Journal of Political Economy 83, 1229-1236.] hotels model. It is shown that a country with unstable demand may benefit from a tariff on imports. More surprisingly, the exporting country may also benefit from the tariff. In general, I consider the problem of a world planner who chooses country specific consumption taxes and subsidies. I show that buyers in countries that tend to consume relatively more in the high demand state should be taxed and buyers in countries that tend to consume relatively more in the low demand state should be subsidized.     

International trade and unemployment: Theory and cross-national evidence

We present a model of trade and search-induced unemployment, where trade results from Heckscher-Ohlin (H-O) and/or Ricardian comparative advantage. Using cross-country data on trade policy, unemployment, and various controls, and controlling for endogeneity and measurement-error problems, we find fairly strong and robust evidence for the Ricardian prediction that unemployment and trade openness are negatively related. This effect dominates the positive H-O effect of trade openness on unemployment for capital-abundant countries, which turns negative for labor-abundant countries. Using panel data, we find an unemployment-increasing short-run impact of trade liberalization, followed by an unemployment-reducing effect leading to the new steady state.     

Survival of the best fit: Exposure to low-wage countries and the (uneven) growth of U.S. manufacturing plants

This paper examines the role of international trade in the reallocation of U.S. manufacturing within and across industries from 1977 to 1997. Motivated by the factor proportions framework, we introduce a new measure of industry exposure to international trade that focuses on where imports originate rather than on their overall level. We find that plant survival and growth are negatively associated with industry exposure to low-wage country imports. Within industries, we show that manufacturing activity is disproportionately reallocated towards capital-intensive plants. Finally, we provide the first evidence that firms adjust their product mix in response to trade pressures. Plants are more likely to switch industries when exposure to low-wage countries is high.     

Market imperfections, wealth inequality, and the distribution of trade gains

Globalization increasingly involves less-developed countries (LDCs), i.e., economies which usually suffer from severe imperfections in their financial systems. Taking these imperfections seriously, we analyze how credit frictions affect the distributive impact of trade liberalizations. We find that free trade significantly widens income differences among firm owners in LDCs: While wealthy entrepreneurs are better off, relatively poor business people lose. Intuitively, with integrated markets, profit margins shrink — which makes access to credit particularly difficult for the least-affluent agents. Richer entrepreneurs, by contrast, win because they can take advantage of new export opportunities. Our findings resonate well with a number of empirical regularities, in particular with the observation that some liberalizing LDCs have observed a surge in top-income shares.     

World trade patterns and prices: The role of productivity and quality heterogeneity

This paper analyzes the role of product quality and labor efficiency in shaping the trade patterns and trade intensities within and across two groups of countries, the developed and richer North and the developing South. Recent empirical literature identifies two groups of evidence — the product lines evidence on different export strategies and sources of competitiveness across product groups and countries, and the aggregate trade flows evidence on a positive relation between the income per capita and both export and import prices (also conditional on the exporter). We attempt to provide a theoretical background for these findings and focus on the North–South productivity differences in a four country North–South trade model with two dimensions of firm heterogeneity. Differences in the firms' product quality and cost efficiency impose different competitiveness sources when entering more difficult markets and result in the observed export and import prices and consumption bundles across the rich and poor countries.     

How do exporters respond to antidumping investigations?

Using monthly transaction data covering all Chinese exporters over the 2000–2006 period, we investigate how Chinese exporters respond to U.S. antidumping investigations. We find that antidumping investigations cause a substantial decrease in the total export volume at the HS-6 digit product level, and that this trade-dampening effect is due to a significant decrease in the number of exporters, yet a modest decrease in the export volume per surviving exporter. We also find that the bulk of the decrease in the number of exporters is exerted by less productive exporters, by direct exporters as opposed to trade intermediaries, and by single-product direct exporters as opposed to their multi-product counterparts. Combined with the existing studies on the effects that antidumping investigations have on protected firms, our study helps piece together a complete picture of the effects of antidumping investigations.     

In search of WTO trade effects: Preferential trade agreements promote trade strongly, but unevenly

The literature measuring the effects of WTO membership on trade flows has produced remarkably diverse results. Rose (2004) reports a wide range of empirical specifications that produce no WTO effects. Tomz et al. (2007) use Rose's data but include de facto WTO membership, to find positive WTO trade effects. Rose (2005) also produced positive WTO trade effects after accounting for the diverse trade effects produced by individual preferential trade agreements (PTAs). When Subramanian and Wei (2007) emphasize general equilibrium trade effects by controlling for multilateral resistance, they find strong WTO trade effects only for industrialized countries. Subramanian and Wei (2007), however, account neither for unobserved heterogeneity among trading partners, nor for differences in trade effects across PTAs (which could inflate WTO estimates). We unify the Rose, Tomz et al., and Subramanian and Wei specifications in one comprehensive approach that minimizes omitted variable bias to show that all specifications produce one consistent result: WTO effects on trade flows are not statistically significant, while PTAs produce strong but uneven trade effects. Extending the gravity model to address specific avenues in which WTO may have affected trade flows, we find that WTO membership boosts trade prior to PTA formation and increases trade among proximate developing countries (at the expense of distant trade). An augmented gravity model that accounts for WTO terms-of-trade theory shows that countries with greater incentives to bargain for tariff reductions before WTO accession experience positive and significant subsequent WTO trade effects.     

Lobbying costs and trade policy

We study how endogenous lobbying costs influence trade policies. Although in practice lobbying expenditures far exceed campaign contributions, the literature on the political economy of trade policy has focused on the latter. In this paper we develop a model in which informational lobbying costs play a role in determining the structure of protection. In the model, special interest groups can choose to send a signal to the policymaker regarding some information they possess, and the policymaker observes the signal before setting the trade policies. We find that lobbying expenditures directly affect the equilibrium policies. In order to test the predictions of the model we collected data on lobbying expenditures from the Center for Responsible Politics as well as data on trade and industry characteristic variables for the United States from other sources. We perform a structural estimation of the equilibrium trade policies and find support for our model. The empirical evidence indicates that lobbying expenditures play an important role in explaining the variation of protection across sectors. Moreover, the model leads to considerably lower and more reasonable estimates of the weight that the government places on social welfare relative to political contributions.     

Firm and sectoral heterogeneity in markup variability

Many theoretical models assume that the markup of price over marginal costs is the same for all firms in a sector, irrespective of firm size, type, or efficiency. We analyze the distribution of markups for 70 Finnish sectors using a complete dataset, including both manufacturing and services sectors and firms of all sizes. In contrast to the constant markup hypothesis, we find (i) large differences in markups within sectors, (ii) higher markups for small firms and domestic firms, and (iii) greater markup heterogeneity in sectors with low capital-labour ratios and a large number of firms.     

Trade, wages, and the political economy of trade protection: evidence from the Colombian trade reforms

Worker industry affiliation plays a crucial role in how trade policy affects wages in many trade models. Yet, most research has focused on how trade policy affects wages by altering the economy-wide returns to a specific worker characteristic (i.e., skill or education) rather than through worker industry affiliation. This paper exploits drastic trade liberalizations in Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s to investigate the relationship between protection and industry wage premiums. We relate wage premiums to trade policy in an empirical framework that accounts for the political economy of trade protection. Accounting for time-invariant political economy factors is critical. When we do not control for unobserved time-invariant industry characteristics, we find that workers in protected sectors earn less than workers with similar observable characteristics in unprotected sectors. Allowing for industry fixed effects reverses the result: trade protection increases relative wages. This positive relationship persists when we instrument for tariff changes. Our results are in line with short- and medium-run models of trade where labor is immobile across sectors or, alternatively, with the existence of industry rents that are reduced by trade liberalization. In the context of the current debate on the rising income inequality in developing countries, our findings point to a source of disparity beyond the well-documented rise in the economy-wide skill premium: because tariff reductions were proportionately larger in sectors employing a high fraction of less-skilled workers, the decrease in the wage premiums in these sectors affected such workers disproportionately.     

Multiple cones, factor price differences and the factor content of trade

This paper examines the theoretical predictions of the multi-cone Heckscher-Ohlin model and the empirical evidence for it. I extend Helpman (1984)by identifying additional restrictions that characterize the free trade equilibrium. I illustrate that the complete set of restrictions are the building blocks of a multi-cone factor content specification which is the factor content dual to Alan Deardorff's (1979)well-known chain of comparative advantage goods prediction. The theoretical analysis implies that the existing tests of Helpman are incomplete. Applying the complete set of restrictions to Choi and Krishna's data set of 8 OECD countries, I find limited empirical support. This is compatible with previous studies suggesting that OECD countries do not occupy different cones.     

The effect of trade liberalization on child labor

The question of how trade liberalization affects the employment of children in developing economies is at the core of the debate on globalization. Trade theory predicts that an increase in the price of an exported good could either increase or decrease child labor depending on the magnitudes of the substitution and income effects. In this paper, we study the relationship between changes in the relative price of an exported commodity and child labor using household-level data from within a poor country. In particular, we relate child labor to regional and intertemporal variation in the real price of rice surrounding national and international rice market integration in Vietnam. We find that higher rice prices are associated with declines in child labor. Income effects play an important role in this relationship. Rice price increases are associated with the largest declines in child labor in households that are large net producers of rice. These findings show that greater market integration can be associated with less child labor. Moreover, our results suggest that the use of punitive trade sanctions on exports from developing countries to eradicate child labor is unlikely to yield the desired outcome.     

The impact of trade liberalization on productivity: Evidence from India's formal and informal manufacturing sectors

Despite a large literature investigating the impacts of trade on firm productivity, there is almost no evidence on how small firms react to trade liberalization. Using a unique dataset of firm-level surveys that are representative of the entire Indian manufacturing industry, I show that India's unilateral reduction in final goods tariffs increased the average productivity of small, informal firms, which account for 80% of Indian manufacturing employment but have been excluded from previous studies. In contrast, the increase in productivity among larger, formal firms was driven primarily by the concurrent reduction in input tariffs. By examining the effect of the tariff liberalization on the distributions of productivity and firm size, I find evidence consistent with the exit of the smallest, least productive firms from the informal sector. In addition, I find that although the decline in final goods tariffs did not significantly impact average formal sector productivity, it did increase productivity among the top quantiles of the distribution.     

Innovation and trade with heterogeneous firms

This paper examines how trade liberalization affects the innovation incentives of firms, and what this implies for industry productivity. For this purpose we develop a reciprocal dumping model of international trade with heterogeneous firms and endogenous R&D. Among the robust results that hold both in the short run when there is no entry, and in the long run under free entry are that trade liberalization increases aggregate R&D when trade costs are low and decreases R&D when trade costs are high. Expected industry productivity rises as trade costs fall.     

A quantile-based test of protection for sale model

This paper proposes a new test of the Protection for Sale (PFS) model by Grossman and Helpman (1994). Unlike existing methods in the literature, our approach does not require any data on political organization. We use quantile and IV quantile regressions in our tests, using the data from Gawande and Bandyopadhyay (2000). Surprisingly, the results do not provide any evidence favoring the PFS model. We also explain why previous work may have found support for it.