Measuring comparative advantages in the Euro Area

A core principle in international economics is that the specialization of an economy on the basis of its comparative advantages leads to gains from trade. However, there is no empirical work directly linking comparative advantages and export specialization. This paper investigates whether the comparative advantages of countries have driven their export specialization. Panel unit root tests, panel cointegration tests, and panel causality tests are used to examine this relationship. We also use panel estimation methods that mitigate heterogeneity, cross-sectional dependence and endogeneity. The empirical analysis is based on annual Euro Area data for the period 1995–2016. Empirical results indicate that comparative advantages positively affect export specialization. Heterogeneous panel causality analysis results support that there is unidirectional panel causality running from comparative advantages to export specialization in most countries; and a reverse causal relation in Greece, Italy, and Portugal. Finally, we detect bidirectional causality in Ireland, Lithuania, Malta, and Slovakia.     

Measuring international specialization

Statistical indicators used to analyze international specialization are manifold. However, most of them do not measure exactly the intensity of revealed comparative advantages and do not distinguish it from other aspects such as trade performance. This paper surveys the available indicators, discriminating between trade specialization and productive specialization (the gap between domestic supply and demand). It is asserted that in order to describe the international specialization pattern of a country, it is enough to consider the product distribution of the elementary trade balances, normalized with respect to trade (trade specialization) or to internal demand (production specialization). Indeed, while the individual, normalized trade balances are only performance indicators, deviations from their average correctly measure the intensity of specialization.     

国际分工演化过程模拟实验研究

文章提供了一个基于主体的开放经济模型———ASMEC-O,用于研究国际分工的演化过程。在国际贸易中,经济主体之间的相互作用内生地决定了国际分工的演化过程,而国际分工的演化过程又会对经济主体的行为产生深刻影响。经济主体应用分类器系统来选择正确的行为规则。我们应用该模型分别进行了在不完全竞争和规模递增假设下,比较利益和路径依赖情况下形成国际分工演化过程的模拟实验。实验结果表明:在两国存在资源禀赋差异的条件下,比较利益和规模经营是形成国际分工的自然原因;在两国不存在资源禀赋差异的条件下,路径依赖也是形成国际分工的重要原因。     

金融市场发展与全球失衡:基于创新与生产的垂直分工视角

在20世纪90年代中期开始的新一轮全球失衡中,以中国为代表的发展中国家成为经常项目顺差的主角。同时,大量FDI从发达国家流向发展中国家,进而形成了发达的全球生产体系。基于全球失衡的上述特点以及在Antràs和Caballero(2007)水平分工模型的基础上,通过建立一个垂直分工模型,可以从国际分工视角为全球失衡问题提供更加坚实的微观基础。同时,模型把社会生产划分为创新和生产两个环节,并指出与生产活动相比,创新活动更加依赖外部融资,因此,金融发展程度更高的国家在创新活动上具有比较优势,而金融发展程度较低的国家则在生产活动上具有比较优势。而且,在进行国际交换时,创新成果和生产成果通常反映在国际收支账户中的不同项目上,因此,基于这种国际垂直分工的创新成果和生产成果的均衡交易将引起参与分工国家经常项目的失衡。     

A ray of hope? Another look at the Italian textile industry

Despite increasing competition from newly industrializing countries, Italy’s textile industry has continued to be an important contributor to the domestic economy. Many observers attribute this resilience to the industry’s focus on quality. Here, we take note of that view but also examine production and cost relationships to explore the existence of returns to scale and the interrelationships among inputs to gain additional insights about the future prospects for this industry. The findings are consistent with constant returns to scale and a substitute relationship between all input pairs except for domestic capital and foreign intermediate goods. The results also suggest some increasing flexibility in the labor market, perhaps including informal sector arrangements, greater responsiveness of labor demand to the price of capital, and more international production sharing arrangements. An increasing elasticity over time of the demands for domestic capital and domestic intermediate goods with respect to the price of foreign substitutes was also observed. Since further economies of scale do not exist, maintaining the Italian textile industry’s reputation for outstanding quality will likely be an important survival strategy for some products. For others, production sharing may be necessary to maintain international competitiveness.     

International Productivity Differences,Infrastructure, and Comparative Advantage*

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the effect of infrastructure provision on industry‐level productivity and international specialization, as suggested by Clarida and Findlay’s (1992 ) model. We calculate total factor productivity (TFP) for 18 developed and developing countries and 10 manufacturing industries, and study the effects of supplies of roads, telecommunications and electric power on international variations in sectoral TFP, i.e. comparative advantage. We also examine the effects of infrastructure on the sectoral composition of output across countries. Using a three‐stage least‐squares estimation strategy to control for endogeneity of infrastructure provision, we find that infrastructure, especially roads, helps to explain patterns of comparative advantage and international specialization.     

Evolution of trade patterns in the new EU member states

The paper analyses the evolution of the trade specialization pattern in the new EU member states. Relying on the empirical approach of the Markov transition matrices it analyses both the changes in the external shape of the distribution of comparative advantages and the intra‐distribution dynamics. The new members show a dynamic trade pattern: they gained comparative advantages relatively fast in sectors in which they were lagging behind at the beginning of the transition, notably in some ‘high tech’ products. In addition, many specialization improvements occurred in those items for which world demand expanded at the fastest rate over the nineties.     

R&D and manufacturing production specialization in developed economies

A study of the relation between technology and manufacturing production specialization in a series of developed economies is performed by means of models relating indicators of revealed symmetric comparative advantage of value added and exports to similar measures of comparative performance of R&D expenditure, capital intensity, total factor productivity and wage costs. The production and R&D specialization are shown to be substantial and sticky. This contrasts with the evidence of a substantial degree of convergence in the patterns of the other variables. Regression estimates show that, although all variables play their part, the impact of comparative R&D efforts on production specialization is by far the strongest. This impact is found to be stronger in the smaller economies and it is especially important in research-intensive industries. The influence of comparative wages is, moreover, found to be positive here, suggesting the dominance of a labour skill and efficiency wage effect over a wage cost competitiveness effect. These findings are shown to conform quite well with the predictions of Schumpeterian theory and of certain contributions to ‘new trade theory’ that have stressed the importance of dynamic economies of scale.     

A Pasinettian approach to international economic relations: the pure labor case

In this paper, the pure labor version of Pasinetti's model of structural change and economic dynamics is extended to consider international economic relations. The conditions for full employment, full expenditure of national income and trade balance equilibrium are established along with solutions for the systems of physical quantities and prices in an open economy. Analytical results concerning the benefits of international trade and learning are studied with formal rigor. Then static and dynamic aspects of the principle of comparative cost advantages are analyzed considering the determinants of the level of specialization and international prices.     

Local banking and local economic growth in Italy: some panel evidence

This article provides new evidence on the contribution of local banking to local economic growth (i.e. at county level – the Italian ‘province’) in Italy. A comprehensive data set is used, which includes control variables for social capital and human capital as well as indicators of the quality of local infrastructures and the production structure of the local economy. A linear within-estimator technique with fixed effects is applied to a modified version of the so-called Barro regression in order to address the well-known econometric issues of reverse causality and estimation bias resulting from unobserved district-specific influences.     

Globalization,rigidities and national specialization: a dynamic analysis

The paper extends the ‘dynamic’ economic geography technique to analyze the evolution of national specialization as trade costs decrease. As agglomeration economies arise, due to the decrease of trade costs, countries could benefit from specializing in one sector. Nevertheless, the sector of specialization, as well as the speed of relocation of factors towards this sector, depends crucially on the costs of relocating factors and on comparative advantages. Labor market rigidities and comparative advantages contribute to lock a country in its current specialization pattern slowing relocation of factors. The model is consistent with some stylized facts on specialization and labor market rigidities in OECD countries.     

Evolving Patterns of International Trade

Theoretical models of growth and trade suggest that patterns of international specialization are dynamic and evolve endogenously over time. Initial comparative advantages are either reinforced or gradually unwound with the passage of time. This paper puts forward an empirical framework for modeling international trade dynamics that uses techniques widely employed in the cross-country literature on income convergence. On applying this framework to industry-level data, evidence is found for significant differences in international trade dynamics among the G-5 economies.     

Comparative Advantage and the Location of Production

The paper returns to a familiar topic in international trade, comparative advantage, introducing it into Krugman's classic, core–periphery model of economic geography. This extra force of dispersion radically changes the stability properties of the model. Instead of the familiar result that trade liberalization leads to increased industrial concentration, lowering trade costs leads initially to increased concentration and then to dispersion of production. When a pattern of comparative advantage exists, integration may lead to international specialization of production. This may be good news for peripheral countries, which may be able to retain industry despite the attraction of the core.     

Gender-Based Occupational Choices and Family Responsibilities: The Gender Wage Gap in Italy

This paper explores the relationship between the gender division of labor, occupational choices, and the gender wage gap in Italy. In Italy, cultural factors and low availability of formal childcare services define gender roles that are generally based on the male breadwinner model, in which childcare is almost completely entrusted to women. The analysis is carried out through an extension of the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition and is based on data from the 2007 Italian National Institute for Workers’ Professional Development (ISFOL). The results are consistent with gender discrimination on wages and suggest that women’s occupational paths are often an outcome of limited choices, and that women’s unpaid domestic work negatively interferes with the energy women can put into paid work. These findings support the need to ensure gender equality in and out of the labor market, especially through deep changes in Italian social norms and through the development of formal childcare.     

International Borrowing, Specialization, and Unemployment in a Small Open Economy

The authors show that an increase in international borrowing increases specialization and unemployment in a small open economy that is subject to terms‐of‐trade risks. The economy has a production advantage in the export sector. However, the size of the export sector is limited by the available funds. To insure workers against income fluctuations arising from terms‐of‐trade risks, firms in the export sector offer workers a stable wage rate with the possibility of unemployment. An increase in international borrowing increases specialization in the export sector, which leads to higher unemployment when the terms‐of‐trade shock is bad. A state‐contingent price subsidy can reduce unemployment without inefficiently reducing specialization. The results are robust to the introduction of risk‐averse firms.     

The pyramid of Okun’s coefficient for Italy

Our aim is to propose a pyramid of Okun’s coefficient by age and gender in the Italian labour force using a varying-coefficient model. The unemployment rate by age and gender—useful information for estimating Okun’s relationship—is not available for Italy from official statistics. Therefore, we provide an estimation of the indicator using microdata for the 2005–2014 period from ISTAT, the Italian labour force survey. Okun’s law is investigated using two measures of the unemployment rate: a traditional measure based on a labour force with and without work experience, and a new measure restricted to the labour force with experience. When Okun’s relationship is estimated using the unemployment rate restricted to the labour force with experience, the young population is less sensitive to business cycles. As the workforce ages, this gap in sensitivity tends to shrink. We also found that there are no significant differences by gender in the magnitude of Okun’s coefficient among the youngest population when considering the unemployment rate restricted to the labour force with experience.     

意大利能源概况及可再生能源的开发和利用

意大利能源非常短缺,石油和天然气储量严重不足,煤矿已经关闭,核能禁止使用,电力仍需依靠进口。据意大利新技术能源与环境委员会（ENEA）最新统计,2007年意能源对外依存度为85．6％,远远超出欧盟的平均水平。本文详细介绍了意大利传统能源的生产、进口及消费情况,同时对意大利可再生能源的开发利用也做了详尽的分析。     

Italy’s decline and the balance-of-payments constraint: a multicountry analysis

According to the literature, the decline experienced by the Italian economy in the last two decades depends on a slowdown of its labour productivity, starting in the 1990s. The supply-side explanations of this slowdown are inconsistent with the major stylised facts. In this paper, we verify whether a better explanation is provided by the effect of a negative demand shock, through Italy’s external constraints, in the framework of Kaldor-Dixon-Thirlwall’s cumulative growth model. To this end, we use a multi-country generalisation of Thirlwall’s balance-of-payments-constrained growth model, which allows us to investigate the contribution of Italy’s main trade partners to Italy’s long-run growth from 1970 to 2010. The trade partners are disaggregated into seven groups: Eurozone core, Eurozone periphery, United States, other European countries, OPEC countries, BRIC, and the rest of the world. The results show that Italy’s long-run growth has been consistent with the Bop-constraint, that its decline can be explained by a progressive tightening of this constraint, that the sudden slowdown of labour productivity in the 1990s corresponds to a major shock on Italy’s external constraint, and that the major contributions to this shock came, through different channels of transmission, from the core Eurozone countries and from OPEC countries.     

A comparative study on the structure of the chemical industry in Belgium and Italy

This paper attempts a comparison of production structures of the chemical industry between Italy and Belgium using a sub-matrix of a large input-output table. There are studies of comparative production structures in an economy but a disaggregate study has not been attempted for a particular industry. The criteria of difference in technique or intermediate use of a product indicate that there are similarities in some of the subsectors of the Belgian and Italian chemical industry while the criterion of direct and indirect requirements of domestic output and Frobenius root yield completely different results.     

From Economia Civile to Kameralwissenschaften. The line of descent from Genovesi to Beccaria in pre-Smithian Europe

Abstract

The Italian Enlightenment is one of the great intellectual achievements of Europe’s siècle des lumières. Its two branches, the Lombard branch together with the Neapolitan, both cooperate to producing perhaps the greatest overall contribution of Italian culture to the development of a modern European tradition of civil rights and enlightened governance. After the Second World War, there has been an intense flourishing of Italian studies, with a worldwide readership, on the Enlightenment and on the Italian Enlightenment in particular. This has been a response to the emerging need for deeper research on the roots of western culture and on the civic values of our societies so much shattered by the traumatic experiences of a new kind of war savaging our cities especially in Europe. Economic analysis is the core issue of the Italian Enlightenment. The economic discipline – originally called Civil economy in eighteenth century Naples and Cameral science (or Public economy) in Milan – was indeed prominent in the historical experience of the Italian Enlightenment, although the prominence of the discipline is only imperfectly reflected in much of the recent historiography. This paper belongs to a new developing line of research on the Italian Enlightenment rooted in a retrieval of the economic discipline of the time. Italy is the country where the first economic Chairs worldwide were created in Universities during the second half of the eighteenth century. This article presents a comparison and reciprocal integration of the two main schools in Italy, the Milanese and the Neapolitan, through the works and influence of the two incumbents to the respective Chairs, Antonio Genovesi in Naples, from 1754, and Cesare Beccaria in Milan, from 1769. The two Professors turn out to have much in common and in particular a clear economic perspective appears to be at the root of the whole of their literary production. A special attention is given to the Lezioni of Genovesi and the Elementi of Beccaria, reflecting the actual teaching of the two masters in their respective lectures.