WHAT HAS BEEN HAPPENING TO EUROPEAN TRADE?

This article by Michael Chui and John Whitley looks at trade behaviour within the European Union. They argue that measures of trade integration do not support the conventional view that intra-EU trade has increased steadily over the past 20 years, although there may have been a sharp rise during the 1990s. They also find evidence from econometric analysis of a shift in export pricing behaviour during the 1980s. UK export performance after exit from ERM shows some distinct differences from the other economies who also devalued at the same time.     

Structural shifts in the manufacturing export performance of oecd economies

This paper identifies structural shifts in manufacturing export performance of the major OECD economies. The particular emphasis of this study is to see whether the longer-run responses of a country's exports to the growth in world demand have undergone trend changes. The econometric work focuses on the time variation in income elasticities from an export demand model over the period 1963–89. It thus covers a period in which there was a substantial slow-down in world economic growth and in which the manufacturing sectors in advanced economies underwent substantial restructuring in the wake of the two oil-price shocks and the competitive challenges of Japan and the NICs. The exercise attempted to evaluate the relative successes and failures of the different OECD economies to maintain or improve their positions in the ‘higher quality’ (income elastic) segments of world trade. Evidence was found for trend improvements in the income elasticity for UK exports from the early 1980s onwards and a trend decline for that of the US over the same period. The effects of non-tariff protection against Japanese exports also showed up in our results and an attempt was made to separately identify its effects.     

China's Exchange Rate Reform and Exports

The paper argues that exchange rate reform is a vital supply-side factor in China's export growth. It contributes to China's export expansion by affording a realistic exchange rate and allowing freer access to foreign exchange, thereby leading to the reduction of anti-export bias and strong supply response. In an imperfect substitutes model, China's long-run export supply and demand functions are estimated in a system context. Evidence is found that the exchange rate reform is one of the most influential factors in China's long-run export expansion, inducing significant response of exports supply. In the short-run, the exchange rate reform and the export volume are also cross-linked through the error-correction process. China's exchange rate policy adjusts speedily to ensure the long-run equilibrium of the supply-side relationship and is likely to have played a dominant role in the adjustment. The study confirms, thanks to the exchange rate reform, China's exchange rate policy has benefited China's remarkable growth of exports before 1994.     

Do services hold the key to an improved UK trade performance?

The UK has established a central role in the global market for trade in services, ranking second to the US in terms of its share of global exports. Our modelling finds that the key factor behind the UK's success is that its exports are focused on the markets where demand has been growing quickest. This represents a notable contrast with research on UK goods exports, which has found that the geographical focus of goods exports has been the main reason for the UK's persistent underperformance. The global financial crisis caused significant damage to the UK's export performance, particularly to the key financial sector which accounts for a quarter of UK services exports and almost two‐fifths of the UK's surplus on services trade. However, the UK's export performance is on the mend and we expect it to retain its position as a key global player in the market for services over the coming five years.     

Will Brexit speed a seismic shift in UK trade patterns?

• The UK's trade pattern has shifted significantly away from the EU since the 1990s. Our analysis suggests that this shift will continue in the decades to come, with the EU share in UK goods exports potentially slipping to around 35% by 2035. Shifts in relative prices from moves in tariff and especially non‐tariff barriers could lower the share further.
• Over 60% of UK goods exports went to the EU in the late 1990s but this has fallen to around 45%. Slow EU growth is partly to blame, with UK exports to the EU barely expanding since 2007. But our analysis also shows that a 1% rise in EU GDP leads to only around half the rise in UK exports to the EU that a 1% rise in GDP in the rest of the world induces in UK exports to non‐EU countries.
• Based on our findings and OE forecasts of long‐term growth in the EU and the world, the EU share of UK goods exports could fall to 37% by 2035 and around 30% by 2050 – back to its 1960 level. The share of services exports to the EU has held up better but is lower than for goods, at around 40%.
• Weakening growth of UK exports to the EU has taken place despite the development of the EU single market since the early 1990s. Indeed, based on our projections UK goods exports to the single market could drop below 5% of UK GDP by 2050. These projections make no allowance for Brexit effects, but the declining importance of exports to the EU single market could colour prospective Brexit negotiations.
• Simple income‐based projections of potential country shares in future UK exports suggest a further swing towards emerging countries (EM) in the decades ahead, especially China and India. Exports to EM could approach 40% of the total by 2035. A shift in the pattern of trade preferences and restrictions faced by the UK post‐Brexit could spark even larger shifts in the structure of UK exports.

     

Why has the UK's export performance been so poor?

The UK's export performance since 2008 has been disappointing, especially when sterling's depreciation in 2008–09 is taken into account. This reflects a deterioration in relative wage costs, particularly relative to the US and Germany. In the four years from Q2 2009, export volumes grew by 17%. In contrast, Germany's exports grew by 34% over the same period. The poor performance of exports is one of the key reasons for lacklustre growth in the UK, with GDP still below pre‐crisis levels…     

THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF EXPORTS IN DETERMINING LEVELS OF REGIONAL OUTPUT AND INCOME: A Model and Empirical Evidence from Kenya

Exports have long been assumed by many to be the most important variable in driving regional growth, although factors such as government expenditure, investment demand, and remittances, among others, have also been recognized as significant. In addition, supply-side constraints to the promotion of regional growth and development have recently received increased attention in the literature. This paper evaluates the relative importance of exports, investment demand, and remittances, as well as supply-constrained agricultural production, in determining levels of regional output, value added, and household income in a single region in Kenya. The analysis is based on a mixed endogenous/ exogenous model derived from a social accounting matrix (SAM) which allows for incorporation of both demand and supply-side considerations. The paper finds that exports are, in fact, the most important factor in explaining regional output and wage income in the region studied, although not overwhelmingly so. In addition, the analysis demonstrates the importance of supply-constrained agricultural production as a determinant of income at the household level.     

THE CURRENT ACCOUNT

In the first half of this year the current account deficit widened sharply to £5.6bn, well above the Chancellor's full-year Budget forecast of £4bn and our own most recent forecast of £5bn. In this Forecast Release, we show that imports have continued to grow very rapidly but export growth has slowed down. This is in contrast to 1987 when exports were strong, very nearly keeping pace with imports. It can be said therefore that this year's balance of payments deterioration owes more to a failure of exports than to rising imports. As to why this has happened, we show that part of the explanation is a two-year decline in UK competitiveness but that the more important cause is the continuing strength of domestic demand which has not only sucked in imports but also diverted possible exports to the home market .     

中国文化产品出口的优劣势分析

本文通过透视我国文化产品出口的自身优势和外部比较优势,结构性缺陷和出口瓶颈问题,发掘我国文化产品出口的潜力并综合国际市场分析我国文化产品出口,为我国文化产品出口的快速健康发展提出切实的改革意见和相关建议。     

Why has China’s vertical specialization declined?

Vertical specialization (VS) is quantified by the VS share, which measures the average import content per dollar of exports. A characteristic of China’s export trade is its strong dependence on assembly and processing activities. To take proper account of this, China’s VS shares should explicitly distinguish processing export production from other production. We estimate China’s annual VS shares from 2000 to 2012—the latest year for which a special input–output table is available that makes such an explicit distinction. We find that VS shares increased from 2000 to 2004 and subsequently started to decrease. To explore why it has declined, we introduce a new structural decomposition approach. We find that the decrease of the VS share appears to have been driven mainly by the substitution of imported intermediates by domestic products. This occurred in particular in the production of exports, which implies an upgrading of China’s position in global value chains.     

Structural vulnerability and resilience to currency crisis: Foreign currency debt versus export

Is there any factor that is not analyzed in the literature but is important for preventing currency crises? I argue that exports are an important factor to prevent currency crises that has not been frequently analyzed in the existing theoretical literature. Using the third generation model of currency crises, I derive a simple and intuitive formula that captures an economy’s structural vulnerability characterized by the elasticity of exports and repayments for foreign currency denominated debt. I graphically show that the possibility of currency crisis equilibrium depends on this structural vulnerability and also analyze how this vulnerability impacts the effectiveness of monetary policy response.     

金融危机下出口退税率的上调对武汉出口产业的影响

自2008年8月1日起,我国政府连续七次大范围地提高出口退税率,以缓解美国金融危机对我国出口产业的影响。武汉作为中部地区一个以机电产品、船舶、汽车零件为主要出口产品,以欧盟、美国、日本三个受经济危机影响最严重的经济体为主要出口地区的港口城市,并没有因为出口退税的连续上调而及时遏制出口下滑。     

Sino-Indian Liberalization: The Role of Trade and Foreign Investment

Two major factors account for a country’s growing integration with the global economy: trade and foreign investment; expansion of exports, and foreign direct investment (FDI). Growth of exports became a dominant source of industrial growth during the 1980s in most developing countries (see Helleiner, 1995). Most of these countries including China and India, have replaced the old import-substitution policy by an export promotion strategy. Both domestic and international factors played an important role in the shift of national policies to repay debts. The process of globalization already underway necessitated export orientation for improving technology, management practices, marketing and international competitiveness. This paper aims at exploring the contributions of exports and FDI to growth and economic liberalization in China and lndia. The first section briefly reviews similarities and differences in the two economies. The second section deals with growth, composition and direction of foreign trade. The third section examines the role of FDI, and its sources and composition by sector, industry, and by overseas ethnic Chinese and Indians. Trade and FDI linkages are examined in the fourth section which also contains a brief case study of Guangdong (China). This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Trade and the Balance of Payments

National accounts data for Q4 2013 revealed that exports surged by 2.8% on the quarter, though while this suggests that the economy has started to rebalance, it did come on the back of a very poor Q3. Services exports came roaring back in the final quarter, after a sustained period of weakness, and goods exports also increased. This contributed to the UK trade deficit almost halving in Q4 compared to the previous three months. But a deterioration in net investment income meant that the UK continued to run a very wide current account deficit…     

进出口间接作用及其介体与路径——基于三时期参数变结构协整方法的研究

本文运用三时期参数变结构协整方法,着重研究我国进出口对经济增长的间接作用,以及产生间接作用的介体与路径。协整结果发现,大多数考察变量与进出口之间存在显著的参数变结构现象。实证研究得出,进出口通过投资、人力资本、技术进步、消费与经济结构这些介体对经济增长的间接作用有正有负,而加总效应都是正值,出口间接作用的弹性测算值较大,而进口间接作用的弹性测算值较小。     

The role of urbanization in the international trade of services

The article examines the effects of urbanization on the international trade of services, mainly exports and imports. A supply-side growth model is used to analyze this nexus. Panel data are constructed consisting of 64 countries for a period between 1980 and 2017. The system generalized method of moments approach is used to forecast the role of urban development on exports and imports of services. Results show that urban development generally has significant and positive effects both in exports and in imports of services, whereas in some income and population groups, the signs of coefficients are negatively significant.     

Price Inflation in the UK: Has Anything Changed?

Since leaving the ERM, the UK has had low inflation while unemployment has fallen substantially. This suggests that wage and price behaviour may have changed over the recent past. In this article, Ken Coutts and Brian Henry review the evidence for such change, particularly in pricing behaviour, but find little convincing evidence of a major structural shift. Rather, low inflation can be attributed to the effect of weak demand and low capacity utilisation on prices (and wages) which are larger and longer lasting than is generally believed, together with beneficial effects from low world inflation. On leaving the ERM, the government also instituted a classic combination of expenditure-switching and expenditure-reducing policies which played an essential part in promoting recovery without increasing inflation.     

中国对美国贸易出口的实证分析——基于1994-2008统计数据

美国的次贷危机最终演变成了全球的经济危机,不仅金融市场遭到了重创,而且实体经济最终也无能幸免。对于我国来说,中国的对外出口下滑态势日渐显现。美国作为中国最大的出口市场,中国对美出口变动对中国的外贸反映具有很好的代表性。文中运用计量经济学方法,基于1994-2008年的中美贸易数据,试图找出决定中国对美国贸易出口变化的一般规律,并对中国外贸经济发展模式转变提出建议。     

Foreign Direct Investment in the UK 1985–1994: The Impact on Domestic Management Practice

Foreign direct investment (FDI) into the UK has grown considerably in recent years. US, French, German and Japanese companies have generally accounted for the largest share of this FDI. In addition to greenfield and expansion investment, a major vehicle for inward FDI has been the acquisition of UKcompanies.
This paper examines whether nationally distinct approaches to management were introduced, following acquisition, among a sample of 201 UK subsidiaries of French, German, Japanese,US and UK companies. It provides data on the extent of changes and the post-acquisition influence of the new parent, comparing changes between the four foreign nationalities and a UK control group.
The study indicates that the process of being acquired and controlled by a foreign parent company was often followed by significant changes in management practice. Some changes were common to all acquisitions, including those by UK companies. A shift towards performance-related rewards and a stronger quality emphasis in operations are two examples. In addition, there was also evidence of effects which differed between nationalities. These conformed to accepted characterizations of national management practice in the case of Japanese and US acquirers, but less so in the case of French and German acquisitions. The findings suggest that present views of French and German management practice require further investigation.     

Brexportgeddon?

• While a major market for UK exports, the EU is not quite as significant as the headline statistics suggest and one which is likely to continue declining in relative importance. The static tariff cost of a worst‐case ‘Brexit’ is estimated to be around ¼% of GDP, a modest sum.
• But the dynamic cost could be higher. And certain industrial sectors look vulnerable, notably aircraft and chemicals where sales to the EU account for over 40% of total (domestic and overseas) demand and EU tariffs are relatively high.
• Moreover, exports to the EU would also face non‐tariff barriers, which would be of particular relevance for the services sector. That services firms export much more to the rest of the world than to the EU suggests that they are well versed in overcoming such barriers. But financial services would face particular risks from Brexit.