Reconsidering Import Dependency in Turkey: The Breakdown of Sectoral Demands with Respect to Suppliers

The common practice for finding direct and indirect import requirements in response to domestic final demand changes involves multiplication of the direct imports coefficients matrix by the Leontief inverse matrix of domestic coefficients. The outcome is usually referred to as the import dependency matrix, a typical element of which gives intermediate import demand, induced by the domestic final demand (policy) sector (column), from the foreign (origin) sector (row). We propose an alternative methodology to capture all three dimensions of import dependency, i.e. origin, destination and policy. The information content of the import dependency matrix is expanded by information on domestic sectors (destination) which demand intermediate imports. Calculations reveal some interesting features of import dependency in Turkey, namely that policy sectors mostly coincide with destination sectors, that oil refinery emerges as a leading destination sector for all, and that raw petroleum is a leading origin sector.     

Trade,technology and skills: Evidence from Turkish microdata

In this paper we report evidence on the relationship between trade openness, technology adoption and the relative demand for skilled labour in the Turkish manufacturing sector, using firm-level data over the period 1980–2001. In a dynamic panel data setting, using a unique database comprising data from 17,462 firms, we estimate an augmented cost share equation whereby the wage bill share of skilled workers in a given firm is related to international exposure and technology adoption.It emerges that R&D expenditures are positive and significantly related to skill upgrading. This result supports the skill-biased technological change argument in the case of a middle-income country such as Turkey.Moreover, the firm-level analysis reveals a positive impact of technological transfer from abroad, foreign ownership and exporting status on the demand for skills, highlighting the role of increasing international openness in fostering skill upgrading within firms.Our microdata also allow us to investigate the direct impact of import flows in shaping the relative demand for skills. The results show that those firms belonging to the sectors experiencing rapid increase in the share of inputs imported from industrialised countries also experience a higher increase in the labour cost share of skilled workers. This finding provides further support for the hypothesis that imports from industrialised countries imply a transfer of new technologies, in turn leading to a higher demand for skilled labour (the so-called skill-enhancing trade hypothesis).     

Introducing the supply side into the LBS Model

This Briefing Paper describes a new version of the London Business School model, which incorporates our most recent research on the supply side. The changes reflect the desire to improve the specification of the supply-side of the model, and to capture the effects of taxes on the incentives to save, invest and to work, while still retaining the basic features of the income-expenditure framework. The main features of the new model are: - Gross domestic product is determined as the sum of the outputs of five sectors. Previously GDP was determined by the demand side as the sum of the expenditure components. - Domestic demand for the output of the private sector depends on domestic absorption and on the price of this output relative to import prices. Overseas demand for exports depends on world economic activity and on the price of exports relative to the world price of exports. - Supply depends on the capital stock, real unit labour costs and real raw material prices. In the short run, input prices are allowed to affect the mix between goods which are exported and those which are supplied to the domestic market. In the long run, however, the mix depends only on the price of exports relative to the price of domestically supplied goods (i.e., relative profitability). - In the short run, disequilibrium in the goods market is reflected in adjustments to prices, inventories and the external balance. - Since gross domestic product is determined by summing the output of each sector, output decisions are reconciled with expenditure decisions by making imports the difference between final expenditure and aggregate supply. - In the long run, increases in government expenditure crowd out private expenditure, but the effect takes several years to come through. - A cut in corporation taxes which is not financed by higher taxes elsewhere boosts the supply side by raising investment and the capital stock, but not by enough to raise revenues sufficiently to pay for the tax cut. Private sector saving increases but not by enough to fund higher public sector borrowing, so the current account goes into deficit. - In the short run, both supply and demand factors influence economic activity; in the long run, the path of the economy depends only on population growth, capital accumulation and technical progress.     

Import elasticities and the external constraint in Mexico

The paper estimates and analyzes an equation for intermediate imports in Mexico during the 1988–2006 post-liberalization period. While some results are obtained from Johansen's VECM model, most of the analysis is carried out within an Error-Correction ARDL framework, following the bounds testing approach of Pesaran et al. (2001). Besides showing that an aggregate equation for intermediate imports can be satisfactorily estimated, the paper focuses on two specific results. First, exports have a very significant effect on imports, and failure to control for this effect (as in most previous studies) can yield misleading results, like an over-estimation of the output elasticity of imports. Second, the response of imports to variations in the real exchange rate has fallen over time, presumably because of the rising share of maquila in Mexico's export basket and the increasing “vertical specialization” of non-maquila export production. Some implications of the estimation results are briefly discussed, making reference to the possible external constraint on Mexico's economic growth.     

Import competition and market power: Canadian evidence

This study estimates price–marginal cost mark-ups for Canadian manufacturing industries during the 1970s in order to assess the impact of import competition on domestic market power. The results are mixed. Based on the analysis, there is no consistent evidence that imports reduced the mark-ups of Canadian firms during that period.     

Import demand behavior in Africa: Some new evidence

Some African economies have experienced increases in the level of their foreign exchange reserves as well as increases in their import volume. Theory suggests that as the level of exchange reserves increases, it may affect the demand for imports since more funds will be available for imports. This paper examines import demand behavior in three African economies, namely Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. An empirical analysis of import demand behavior is presented, based on the dynamic error-correction model, which allows an explicit parameterized division of effects into long-run influences, short-term adjustment and error-correction term. It uses econometric techniques organized around Johansen and Harris–Inder cointegration analyses; fully modified OLS, dynamic OLS and non-linear OLS to estimate long-run import demand functions.     

Exchange Rate Pass‐through to Trade Prices: The Role of Nonlinearities and Asymmetries*

A standard assumption in the empirical literature is that exchange rate pass‐through is both linear and symmetric. This study tests these assumptions for export and import prices in the G7 economies. It focuses on non‐linearities in the reaction of profit margins to exchange rate movements, which may arise from the presence of price rigidities and switching costs. Nonlinearities are characterized by augmenting a standard linear model with polynomial functions of the exchange rate and with interactive dummy variables. The results suggest that nonlinearities and especially asymmetries cannot be ignored, although their magnitude varies noticeably across countries.     

汇率变动对我国商品贸易结构影响研究

汇率作为相对价格和政策变量,具有引导贸易流向和调整贸易结构的作用。由于汇率变动引起生产中所使用要素相对价格发生变化,从而改变一国生产某类商品比较优势程度发生变化,使统一汇率政策可以成为差别产业贸易政策。本文从我国进出口商品贸易结构以及贸易国别来源角度分析人民币汇率改制后我国进出口商品贸易结构变化。采用实证方法考察人民币实际汇率变动对我国进口和出口商品贸易结构的影响。     

Estimation of food demand in Turkey: method of an almost ideal demand system

In this study, data of the household income and consumption expenditure surveys conducted by the Turkish Statistical Institute for 1994 and 2003 years were used; income, price, and cross price elasticities under six aggregated product groups were estimated within the framework of the an almost ideal demand system approach for food expenditures; and estimation of household consumers’ food demand in Turkey was analyzed. According to the findings obtained, it was established that a price-bound change would appear in the food demand, and elasticities were calculated. Expenditures by product groups and price elasticities were obtained, and the product groups were aggregated as bread and cereals; meat, fish, and poultry; milk and dairy products, oil and egg; vegetables and fruits; various fast food and alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.     

The exchange rate and machinery and equipment imports: Identifying the impact of import source and export destination country currency valuation changes

This paper presents estimates of the impact of exchange rate movements on the quantity of machinery and equipment imports. Many countries have become increasingly reliant on imports of these types of products and evidence in a number of studies indicates that investment in machinery and equipment contributes to improved productivity and growth. Unlike previous studies, this study differentiates between exchange rate movements with respect to machinery and equipment import source and final good export destination countries. Data are employed for two machinery and equipment importing countries, Australia and Canada, and two exporting countries, Japan and the U.S. The results indicate that a currency depreciation with respect to an import source country has a significant negative effect on the quantity of machinery and equipment imports, while a depreciation with respect to a domestic final good export destination country has a significant positive effect. These findings imply that the net impact on the quantity of machinery and equipment imports of an exchange rate change with respect to a particular country will depend on the extent to which that country is a supplier of machinery and equipment imports and a market for domestic exports.     

贸易自由化与中国企业进口中间品质量升级

进口高质量中间品是发展中国家实现技术追赶的重要途径;贸易自由化会降低进口高质量中间产品的贸易成本和相对价格,促进企业进口中间品质量升级。基于此,本文利用细分关税数据、海关数据和工业企业数据,将加工贸易作为控制组、一般贸易作为处理组,采用倍差法经验分析贸易自由化对中国企业进口中间品质量的影响。结论发现：伴随关税下降,中国企业进口中间品质量整体增长,且一般贸易组增长速度远快于加工贸易组。同加工贸易相比,关税下降1%一般贸易进口中间品质量增长高出0.06%~3.74%。这一作用在持续进口企业中,在基础设施完善、市场化水平高、经济集聚程度高的地区更明显。上述结论通过了同趋势假设、内生性等一系列稳健性检验。     

Separability and Aggregate Shocks in the Life-cycle Model of Consumption: Evidence from Spain

The purpose of this paper is to test the life-cycle permanent income hypothesis using an unbalanced panel from the Spanish family expenditure survey. Our model accounts for aggregate shocks and non-separability in the Euler equation among consumption goods, contrary to most of the literature in this area. Our results do not indicate excess sensitivity of consumption growth to income.     

On the demand generated by a smooth and concavifiable preference ordering

It is shown that if a consumer's preference ordering is strictly convex and is representable by means of a concave, twice continuously differentiable utility function, then the partial derivative of a demanded commodity with respect to its price is bounded from above in a neighborhood of a price vector at which the demand fails to be differentiable. In the case of two commodities, if the demand does not possess finite derivatives with respect to prices at a certain point, then the partial ‘derivative’ of a commodity with respect to its price is equal to minus infinity. The same result holds for n commodities under ‘almost every’ choice of coordinates in the commodity space. If preferences are weakly convex but the same representation assumption holds, demand may not be single-valued but own-price difference quotients are still bounded from above.     

The impact of purchasing power parity on auto foreign trade

In this study, the validity of the assumption saying that the import and export are a function of prices as in the classical, neo-classical approaches is studied within the framework of the import and export of automobile vehicles between 1997 and 2003 in Turkey and the EU countries which are automobile manufacturers. The price here is considered as the purchasing power parity. The effect of the purchasing power parity on the automobile import and export is determined by using classical models with constant coefficients, and fixed and random effects models with constant slope coefficients and a constant term differing according to units and/or time. The models comprise balanced linear panel data models. The likelihood ratio test and F-test are used in the selection of fixed effects and classical models; and the Lagrange multiplier test is used in the selection of random effects and classical models. As for the selection of fixed and random effects models, the Hausman test is used. As a result of these tests, the fixed effects models covering both individual and time effects are selected as the most appropriate import and export models.     

Pro‐competitive Effect of Trade and Non‐decreasing Price‐Cost Margins*

This study surveys the empirical evidence on the pro‐competitive effect of international trade and analyses the determinants of price‐cost margins for OECD countries between 1970 and 2003. The main objective was to focus on the quantification of the impact of imports on margins, and understand why, despite trade liberalization, price‐cost margins have not fallen overall. On average, imports would have contributed to a large decrease of five percentage points in the price‐cost margins. However, these effects seem to have been partially counterbalanced by the impacts of financial deepening and disinflation.     

Specification and estimation of dynamic demand systems incorporating polynomial price response functions: An application to U.S. clothing imports

Numerous recent empirical demand studies utilize the habit formation and state variable approaches to describe dynamic demand behavior. In this paper, we suggest the introduction of polynomial price response functions as an alternative method of generating dynamic conditional demand systems. This approach allows direct estimation of the degree of price substitutability among products and the timing of price effects. The application presented here involves the estimation of dynamic CES and indirect additive translog demand systems for U.S. clothing imports. The estimated price response lag structures and matrices of long-run price elasticities are presented and analyzed. Also, the precision of the non-parametric price elasticity estimates is evaluated by computing approximate asymptotic standard errors.     

A Test for a Functioning Market Economy: Seton'S Eigenprices of Turkey

We use Seton's eigenprices to see if some evidence can be found in support of the European Commission's official statement that the Turkish economy can be considered as a functioning market economy. Given an input–output flows matrix, there is a unique set of prices for outputs and production factors compatible with final demand, generating demand for factors. The findings based on Turkey's most recent I–O table and comparable I–O matrices for Romania and Poland (two EU members) in 2005 show that price distortions were on average five times larger in Turkey. Hence, based on price distortions alone, there was no solid evidence in support of the statement that Turkey had a functioning market economy.     

我国棉花产业进口现状原因浅析

文章运用协整分析方法,阐述了我国棉产业进口状况,研究表明:价格差距拉大是导致棉花进口量大幅攀升的直接原因。     

House price convergence in euro zone and non-euro zone countries

This study investigates whether single currency use increased house price convergence among various countries. First, the panel unit root test results indicate that the house prices in euro zone countries were more correlated than the house prices in non-euro zone countries. Second, the house prices in various European countries converged towards the house prices in Germany, which uses the single currency, rather than towards those in the United Kingdom, indicating that single currency use increased the influence of the German housing market on other markets. Finally, the log t regression model, a new convergence test, was employed and determined that the house prices in various European countries were not converging before 1992 but began to do so after that year. After the euro was implemented as an official currency, the house prices in various countries converged towards a consistent level. On the basis of the relative transition paths, this study determines that the differences among housing markets in various countries have continuously decreased since 1992. The empirical results indicate that the law of one price is applicable to tradable goods and that single currency use can integrate housing markets, which include non-tradable goods.     

Briefing Paper Import Penetration in the United Kingdom

There is widespread concern about the growth of imports in the United Kingdom. British industry is said to be ‘bleeding to death’ as a result of foreign competition and calls are heard for protective measures such as import controls to save the economy. There are three elements in the case for protection. The first is that trends in Britain's foreign trade in manufactured goods have been extremely adverse and that there are no good grounds for believing that they will change spontaneously. The second is that the growth of the economy is constrained by the balance of payments and that consequently a serious and growing depression will develop throughout the 1980s which could reach catastrophic proportions towards the end of the decade when North Sea oil production declines. The third is that import controls are an effective way of coping with the problem. It is recognised that the second two elements are controversial. As it happens we disagree with both of them. However, it is generally assumed that the first element - the view that increasing import penetration will destroy British industry - is common ground and that no-one disagrees with it. Our aim in this Briefing Paper is to challenge this view. There is no doubt that import penetration (which we measure as the share of imports in GDP) has growth rapidly, especially over the past two decades. In 1960 imports amounted to 25 per cent of GDP. By 1970 this proportion had risen to 28 per cent and in 1979 it had risen to 35 per cent. However, we shall argue that the economic processes that have been responsible for this development have on the whole been poorly understood. We reject the popular view that Britain is structurally unable to compete in world markets. Instead we propose an alternative interpretation of import penetration which explains UK trade performance in terms of the broader pattern of the world trade order. In the light of this theory we argue that import penetration in the UK is not an inexorable trend reflecting the relative weakness of the UK in international trade. On the contrary, UK import penetration has been adjusting to a new world trading environment and now that this process of adjustment is nearing completion the rate of increase of import penetration seems likely to abate. Moreover, the British people have benefited from this greater degree of free trade and any protective measures designed to inhibit the economic forces that we describe below would damage the economic welfare of the British public as a whole.