A structural VAR analysis of the impact of macroeconomic shocks on Pakistan's textile exports

This paper creates a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model which looks at the macroeconomic factors that impact the export of both finished and unfinished Pakistani textiles between 1980 and 2011. The analysis is unique in two ways: first, it separates unfinished (low value-added) textile exports from finished (high value-added) textile exports; second, it separates out the impact of aggregate exchange rate changes with respect to trading ‘partners’ from aggregate exchange rate changes with respect to trading ‘competitors’. We find that unfinished, or low value-added, Pakistani textile exports were positively impacted by the aggregate consumption of trading partners while finished, or high value-added, textile exports were negatively affected by these shocks. Also, a real depreciation of the Pakistani exchange rate leads to temporary increases in unfinished textile exports but sustained increases in the level of finished textile exports. Finally, positive shocks in the textile exports of competitor countries lead to temporary decreases in both unfinished and finished Pakistani textile exports, but these falls were followed by eventual increases in the exports of both.     

Employment shocks and anti-EU sentiment

Euroscepticism and the rise of populist parties have often been linked to economic insecurity. This paper identifies regional employment changes as causal factors for forming attitudes towards the European Union and voting for eurosceptic parties in European Parliament elections. To do so, I combine industry-specific employment data for roughly 260 European NUTS II regions with individual-level Eurobarometer survey data for the past 20 years and regional voting results. I apply panel data and instrumental variable methods; for the latter I construct a Bartik-style instrument, which predicts employment changes on the basis of regional industry specialization and Europe-wide sector specific employment growth rates. The effect of employment changes on attitudes towards the EU is particularly strong for unemployed and low-skilled workers in regions with a high share of migrants from other European member states, which supports the narrative that ‘losers of globalization’ tend to be more skeptical towards economic and political integration.     

Do BRICS Have Similar Disaggregated Trade Patterns with Different Regions?

This is the first study attempting to investigate the patterns of BRICS’ imports and exports with five United Nations regional groups: the African, Asia-Pacific, Eastern European, Latin American and Caribbean, and Western European and Others. A panel data gravity trade model with series from 2001 to 2016 was used to estimate the gravity variables in the models. The main results provide evidence that reinforced the dissimilarities in the foreign trade patterns of BRICS with these five regional groups. The econometric results substantiated that BRICS’ foreign trade patterns are sensitive to changes in the economies of trading partners from the more developed regions. This is evidence for stronger economic ties between BRICS and the more developed regions such as Western Europe and Asia-Pacific. It also reveals the trade convergence of BRICS in these developed regions.     

China's foreign trade policy and world trade organization membership

This paper provides an overview of China's major economic reforms and how they impacted certain key domestic economic indicators such as income, production, employment, and prices. More importantly, the paper concentrates on China's foreign trade focusing on such issues as import and export policies, exchange rate controls, foreign investments, balance of payments, traded commodities, and major trading partners. China's chance of becoming a member of the World Trade Organization is also addressed.     

Modelling regional policy scenarios in the agri-food sector: a case study of a Spanish region

The agri-food industry has several features of great importance for sustainable economic growth in rural areas. The objective of this work is to evaluate the effects associated with different scenarios of growth, and changes in the regional agri-food industry. These scenarios simulate changes in exports and imports, changes in technology and changes in the level of industrial integration. We develop a computable general equilibrium model calibrated for the region. Our results indicate that policies trying to improve the competitiveness and dynamism of strategic sectors as the agro-industrial complex in this regional economy exert positive effects on its growth and income, having notable impacts on local job markets but also in other sectors and activities linked through the whole production chain.     

Closer Economic Relations with East Asia?

This paper examines Australia's economic links with East Asia and the policy implications of these links. The main issue is whether Australia should join the regional trading arrangements with East Asian countries that have been proposed. It examines the factors which determine the share of East Asia in Australian exports. One of these, the country bias factor, is threatened by proposed regional trading arrangements which might exclude Australia. After considering the costs of exclusion, the paper concludes that Australia should consider developing new bilateral or regional trade arrangements with countries in East Asia.     

边际工资补贴对区域经济的影响

The main research of this paper is the regional effects of marginal wage subsidies. Some regional economic issues are discussed such as production scales, operating profits, industry distribution, and expenditure distribution across the rich and poor regions. It is proven that, marginal wage subsidies improve the employment and raise the industrial share of the poor region, but meanwhile the expenditure share in the rich region increases for marginal wage subsidies. It is also showed that, the relationship between the effectiveness of marginal wage subsidies and the level of openness to trade is ambiguous when the wage level is very high, however, if the wage level is low enough thus marginal wage subsidies can cause relatively large employment increase, marginal wage subsidies cooperating with freer trade policy would be more effective.      

Trade with China: do the figures add up?

There are wide discrepancies in bilateral trade data compiled by China and by its trading partners, particularly the United States. This paper investigates the main reasons, notably the role of Hong Kong as an entrepôt, and develops a methodology to provide more accurate estimates for these trade flows. It extends the Sung—Lardy method in recent literature and achieves a reconciliation of the two data sets by China and by its major partners. The method recognizes that both the Chinese and the partners' data are likely to be distorted and demonstrates that a complete picture can he constructed by using data recorded from Hong Kong. A new estimate of the re-export margins in Hong Kong on Chinese exports is presented and used in the data reconciliation exercises, and problems of valuation and transit lag when comparing an export series with its counterpart import series are taken into account by the new method. The effects of using proved data are demonstrated in an application to examine fair market access in China—US bilateral trade undertaken by Tower (1993).     

Antidumping under International Fragmentation: Evidence from China

Applying a negative binomial regression model, this paper investigates how Chinese exports have reshaped the global value chain and the use of antidumping. We use trade in value‐added statistics to distinguish between Chinese exports of intermediate and final products to its main trading partners, including the USA, Mexico, South Korea, the UK, Germany, France and Italy, among others, and find that other countries welcome China as an intermediate producer, although not necessarily as a final good producer. We also find that a higher level of fragmentation reduces the likelihood of antidumping initiation and measures.     

Is trade in electrical and electronic products sensitive to IPR protection? Evidence from China’s exports

This article attempts to provide the first empirical evidence on the effect of intellectual property rights (IPRs) on China’s export of electrical and electronic products. It adopts a gravity model for unbalanced panel data of China’s 146 important trading partners over the period of 2002–2012. To eliminate the effects of FDI in determining the linkage between IPR and exports, the panel excludes the destination countries and territories that invest in China. The results reveal that the level of IPR protection in destination countries has a positive impact on China’s flow of exports. Further analysis on data disaggregated by IPR score demonstrates that a higher level of IPR protection in destination countries and territories is positively linked with China’s exports of these items in each of the IPR protection clusters and indicates a strong market power effect by the interplay between R&D expenditure and IPR in the destinations. Finally, both market power and market expansion effects are found to be prevalent in the destinations, as implied by the coefficient of IPR protection disaggregated by income level of China’s export destinations. The results generally resemble those in the literature that describe the linkage between IPR protection and trade flows.     

Technological leadership and sectorial employment growth: A spatial econometric analysis for U.S. counties

This paper studies the determinants of technological catch‐up considering spatial and sectoral aggregation of industries. We investigate how geographical and technological proximity to the technology leader impact regional employment growth. We model technological progress by means of a hierarchical process of catch‐up to the technology leader. We also incorporate measures for knowledge spillover effects to test the roles of competition, specialisation, and diversity at the industry level. Empirical results using data at the county level for different economic sectors (2‐dig NAICS) for the United States indicate that human capital plays a crucial role in promoting sectoral employment growth. The association between technological/geographical distance to the technology leader and employment growth varies across sectors.     

Unity versus Collaboration: Construction of China's Belt and Road Free Trade Agreement 2.0 Network

In the context of the United States prioritizing bilateral as well as trilateral trade agreements and China's regional economic integration strategy based on the Belt and Road (B&R) Initiative, the B&R free trade agreement (FTA) and the US–European–Japanese FTA (UEJFTA) have become the two regional economic integration processes with the greatest potential impact on the world economic landscape. The present paper examines the game situation as well as the economic effects of China's B&R‐FTA 2.0 network against the United States' UEJFTA to study the optimization of China's B&R FTA system. By constructing a four‐country extended game model under a two‐part expansion, we find that an increase in members will promote the welfare of each country when there is a single regional trade agreement; the potential member countries tend to choose larger organizations for higher economic benefits when there are several regional trade agreements. Our quantitative simulation shows that promoting the construction of the FTA 2.0 network based on the B&R can significantly alleviate the impact of FTA entered into by the United States with its major trading partners.     

Who Trades with Whom? Exploring the Links between Firms' International Activities,Skills, and Wages

Using firm‐level data on the Italian manufacturing industry, we examine how trade activities are related to workforce composition and wages. We contribute to empirical research on these issues in three ways. First, we provide new evidence that is consistent with multi‐attribute models on firm heterogeneity and trade. We show that even after controlling for various company characteristics, including size and capital intensity, exporters still pay higher wages and employ more skilled workers than nonexporters. Second, we consider engagement in international transactions, either by means of exports, imports, or a combination of the two. We show that failing to control for importing activities may bias upward export premia. Third, we look at how the wage and the employment structures of trading firms change with the country of destination and origin of trade flows. We find that wage and skill premia are influenced by the characteristics of partner countries.     

物流发展、FDI与出口贸易结构优化——基于中部地区的实证分析

基于中部六省1994-2012年的统计数据,通过对物流发展水平指标提取主成分,发现中部地区物流发展综合水平在不断提升,特别是入世后得到迅猛的发展;采用资本、技术密集型产品占工业制成品出口额的比重测算的结果显示,中部地区出口贸易结构正由劳动密集型向资本、技术密集型演化。借助SVAR模型实证表明:中部地区FDI与物流发展水平及出口贸易结构之间呈现了良性互动效应,但物流发展水平只是与FDI显现了互动,而未能有效促进出口贸易结构优化,在吸引FDI促进出口贸易结构优化方面,物流依然是中部区位优势中的一块短板。基于实证结果的启示,文章最后提出中部地区应考虑将提高区域物流信息化水平、实现区域物流一体化及标准化等作为政策的着力点,改善物流业软环境,才能更好地吸引FDI有效推动经济转型、产业升级及出口贸易结构优化。     

Does Ease of Communication Increase Trade? Commonality of Language and Bilateral Trade

Gravity model explanations of trade volumes frequently include dummy variables to account for the commonality of language among trading partners. In this paper we use a data set for the number of people in a country who speak English as a first language or English as a second language (Crystal, 1997) as an indicator of the ease with which trade with the United States occurs. Controlling for commodity fixed effects we use SITC three digit industry data centred on 1995 United States bilateral trade with 33 countries to determine the effect of the degree of language commonality on bilateral trade. Both English as a first language and English as a second language are found to be less important for exports than for imports. This is true for all three digit industries as well as when the specific industry groups identified in Rauch (1999) are considered.     

出口贸易及其名义汇率与实际汇率风险——基于中国对主要贸易伙伴国面板数据的实证研究

本文采用中国对28个主要贸易伙伴国出口的面板数据,对比分析了2005年汇改前后人民币名义汇率波动风险和实际汇率波动风险对中国出口的影响.通过实证研究后发现:无论是汇改前还是汇改后的人民币实际汇率波动风险对中国的出口均未产生显著影响;而汇改后,人民币名义汇率波动风险却对中国的出口产生了显著的负向影响.由此可见,相对于实际汇率波动风险而言,名义汇率波动风险对中国出口的影响更显重要.     

Trade Agreements and Trade Opportunities: A Flexible Approach for Modeling Australian Export and Import Elasticities

Patterns of trade have changed enormously over the last 30 years, particularly due to the economic emergence of several Asian countries. With the increasing international tendency for bilateral preferential trade agreements, it is important for countries to be aware of trade substitution possibilities. This paper estimates import and export price elasticities for Australia and its major trading partners in Europe and Asia, 1958 to 2002, using a fully flexible version of the Symmetric Normalized Quadratic aggregator function. Imports and exports are disaggregated into six regions, covering 17 countries. Our results illuminate the (changing) substitution and complementarity patterns for Australian foreign trade, highlighting trading opportunities in the face of a changing international environment.     

Statistical analysis of under- and overinvoicing of imports

This paper uses trading partners' data comparisons at three different levels of refinement to verify whether the elimination of an over-valued exchange rate, which itself has been claimed to lead to over-valuation of imports, affects the valuation practice of importers. The advantages of correcting the import and export data of trading partners for eventual discrepancies in the volume of these trade flows is highlighted. Data for Turkey, Pakistan and The Netherlands are used. Turkey devalued in 1970, while Pakistan devalued in 1972. Data availability and the large discrepancy between reported exports to and imports from The Netherlands suggested the analysis of the data for this country.     

中国产业层次对地区初次分配 福利水平的提升效应——基于省级面板数据的实证分析

本文利用1993-2009年的省级面板数据，构建地区初次分配福利系数和产业层次系数，通过实证方法研究产业层次对地区初次分配福利水平的影响。研究表明，产业层次与地区初次分配福利水平正相关，产业层次越高，初次分配福利水平越高,产业层次对初次分配福利水平具有提升作用。产业层次系数增长率与地区初次分配福利系数增长率呈现先降后升的U型规律。这种U型变化具有经济发展的阶段性特点和区域性特点。产业层次的进一步提升对西部和中部福利水平的改进更明显，现代服务业产值结构提升的福利效应将在东部和东北地区体现得更明显。     

A SEARCH FOR CLOSER ECONOMIC RELATIONS IN EAST ASIA

In recent years, growing interdependence in East Asia through trade and financial cooperation heightened the need for East Asian Economies to engage in closer regional economic relations. This paper attempts to discuss emerging economic integration efforts in East Asia with special reference to bilateral and regional free trade agreements. It discusses backgrounds for recent developments of East Asian regionalism in terms of deepening intraregional economic dependence and financial cooperation, and South Korea's position towards FTAs with major trading partners as well as East Asian economic integration. Important issues and challenges for an East Asian FTA are presented.