The impact of trade on the relative wages and employment of low skill workers in France

The impact of international trade on labour markets in developed countries will be different according to the degree of competition in product markets, the flexibility of the labour market and the skill intensity of production. An econometric analysis of the impact of trade in France has been undertaken using sectoral data for the period 1985–p1992. It is found that lower relative import prices reduce the relative employment of low skill workers in the first half the period and reduce their relative wages in the second half. In both cases the effect is more pronounced in sectors where the skill intensity of production is initially low.     

The rise of service employment and its impact on aggregate productivity growth

This paper investigates how the employment shift from manufacturing toward service sectors affects the rate of economic growth when services play their role both in intermediate and in final demand. Our model includes as a special case both Baumol’s [Baumol, W.J., 1967. Macroeconomics of unbalanced growth: the anatomy of urban crisis. American Economic Review 57 (3), 415–426] model, in which services are produced only for final consumption, and Oulton’s [Oulton, N., 2001. Must the growth rate decline? Baumol’s unbalanced growth revisited. Oxford Economic Papers 53 (4), 605–627] model, in which services are entirely devoted to intermediate demand. We show that, given that the growth rate of productivity in the service sector is lower than that in the manufacturing sector, both the employment share in manufacturing and the rate of economic growth will decline in the long run irrespective of the size of the elasticity of substitution between labor and service input.     

知识产权型技术贸易壁垒的影响及其规制

技术性贸易壁垒正成为当今世界最重要的贸易壁垒,知识产权与技术标准相结合产生的知识产权型技术贸易壁垒的威力远远超过普通的技术贸易壁垒或者知识产权贸易壁垒.本文对知识产权型技术贸易壁垒的贸易影响进行了简要分析,探讨了目前规制知识产权型技术贸易壁垒的途径.     

厦门电子业外商投资面面观

发展经济学理论认为,外国投资对发展中国家经济的发展具有扩展性的影响,它给发展中国家带来的不仅仅是资金,而且还包括管理技术、现代技术、充分就业和进入世界市场的能力。跨国公司的“一揽子”投资,是发展中国家经济快速发展的不可或缺的因素之一。本文试图以厦门特区电子产业外商投资为案例,对跨国公司“一揽子”投资的成效进行探讨。 一、厦门特区外商电子产业直接投资概况 自１９８０年厦门经济特区成立之后,特区政府即把引进外资作为推动其经济增长的主要动力。截至２０００年底,厦门市累计批准外商投资企业４９９１项,投资总…     

The impact of trade costs on exports: An empirical modeling

Studies, which have discussed some of the important issues concerning the measurement of trade costs, have conceded that the literature is still in the early stages of understanding and measuring what the real costs are. It is in this context, decomposing trade costs into ‘natural’ costs, ‘behind the border’ costs, ‘explicit beyond the border’ costs, and ‘implicit beyond the border’ costs, this paper suggests a method to measure the impacts of these components on changes in exports between countries in the absence of complete information on all the components of trade costs in home and partner countries. Empirical measurement has been demonstrated using 1999 and 2004 trade data from Pakistan. The results show that Pakistan's export growth between 1999 and 2004 came mainly from the reduction in both ‘explicit and implicit beyond the border’ trade costs in partner countries.     

The impact of minimum wages on youth employment in Portugal

On January 1, 1987, the legal minimum wage for workers aged 18 and 19 in Portugal was raised by 49.3%. This shock is used as a “natural experiment” to evaluate the impact of the minimum wage change on teenagers’ employment. The method is to compare, based on firm-level microdata, the employment growth of 18-19-year-old workers with employment growth of older workers. The main findings are that the increase in the minimum wage significantly reduced employment of 18 and olds, but increased employment of 20- olds.     

宏观经济景气波动对就业增长的影响

中国不成熟的市场经济和特殊的人口环境使得用就业弹性和奥肯定律均无法有效反映我国经济增长与就业关系,更无法刻画经济波动对就业的冲击。本文从宏观经济景气波动影响就业增长的三个路径：劳动力供给、劳动力需求和政府公共就业政策来建立系统的分析模型,以探析经济波动与就业增长的长期均衡关系和滞后冲击效应。在劳动力供给系统中,经济波动使经济活动人口增多,加快了就业增长;在劳动力需求系统中,经济波动不利于经济增长,从而不利于劳动力需求增长;在政府就业促进政策系统中,社会保障和就业的投入缓和了经济波动对就业增长的冲击。     

The impact of declining youth employment stability on future wages

Has the early career become less stable during the 1980s and 1990s? And does a lack of early-career employment stability inhibit wage growth? I analyze exc     

Sectoral employment effects of trade and productivity in Europe

The impact of trade and technology in the European case is assessed. A framework is developed which incorporates employment effects of (i) export expansion (ii) import competition and (iii) labour-saving productivity improvements. In this context, evidence is found for the hypothesis that international trade induces adjustments in technology.     

The impact of trade union membership on training in Britain

This article investigates the impact of openness and tariff reductions on the technical inventiveness of selected OECD countries. The results suggest that even these simple forms of trade liberalization may, under certain conditions, favour technical inventiveness or creativity, the most advanced form of technological gain. It is therefore likely that other, more directly relevant kinds of liberalization of exchange, will have some positive effects on less extreme forms of acquisition of technical knowledge. The diversity in outcomes across the range of countries surveyed points to the need to specify the conditions under which these dynamic technological gains can be reaped and serve as a rationale for international trade policy.     

The impact of material and service outsourcing on employment in Thailand's manufacturing industries

With increasing emphasis on the importance of outsourcing, the ‘fear of job losses’ has been of significant interest, not only in the developed countries, but also in the developing countries. In this article, we empirically investigate the impacts of intermediate inputs (material) and services outsourcing on the relative demands for skilled and unskilled labour in Thailand's manufacturing sectors from 1999 to 2003. Based on the aggregation of establishment-level data at 4-digit industrial classification, we find that both intermediate inputs and service outsourcing are relatively skill-biased. Further, our results show that intermediate inputs outsourcing has negative impacts on the relative demands for skilled and unskilled workers, whereas service outsourcing shifts the demand towards skilled workers at the expense of unskilled workers.     

The trade impact of European Union agricultural preferences

We assess the impact on agricultural trade of European Union (EU) trade policies, using a gravity model based on disaggregated trade flows from 161 developing countries (DCs) to 15 EU member countries. We use a sample selection framework to account for potential selection bias of positive trade flows and provide an explicit measure for relative preference margins. From a policy perspective, our results debunk some of the most widespread criticisms of preferential policies: EU preferences matter and have a positive impact on DCs agricultural exports at both the extensive and intensive margins, although with significant differences across sectors.     

Insider-outsider forces in wage and employment determination: The case of Sweden

This paper applies a statistical approach used by Andersen & Hylleberg (1993) in their study of insider-outsider effects in wage-employment determination in the Danish manufacturing sector, to analyse insider-outsider effects in the Swedish private sector. Focusing on the univariate and multivariate trend properties of the data, a bivariate wage-employment error correction model is used as an explicit test-bed for the theoretical predictions of adjustments to anticipated and unanticipated shocks. According to the Blanchard & Summers (1986) insider-outsider model, the former changes are absorbed entirely by wages while the latter changes are reflected fully in employment. As in the case of analysis on Danish manufacturing data, it is found that the evidence based on data related to the Swedish private sector also fails to accept the Blanchard & Summers insider-outsider model in its unqualified version. Nonetheless several important traits of insider-outsider mechanisms seem to be in accordance with the observed evolution of the data.     

The impact of the Soviet trade shock on central and East European economies

The paper examines the significance of what is called the Soviet trade shock on central and East European economies. The analysis involves two steps: first, the terms-of-trade effect of replacing the CMEA trading rules by market rules is estimated, and second, the impact of the loss of export markets in the former Soviet Union is assessed. The results of estimating the terms-of-trade effect for Hungary and Poland show that the income losses in 1990–1991 have not been as substantial as commonly believed (3.5 percent of GDP and 1.0 percent of GDP, respectively). The decomposition of the fall of total Soviet imports in 1991 into three categories, reflecting the impact of domestic recession, reduction of trade with ex-CMEA, and diversion of imports from ex-CMEA to western countries allowed us to estimate the CMEA-induced part of the trade collapse at 36 to 49 percent of the total fall of exports to the Soviet Union by the CEECs (except Romania), with the impact of domestic recession being in all cases stronger than the CMEA dissolution effect. An attempt has also been made to estimate the impact of the Soviet trade shock on GDP levels in CEECs. The results obtained indicate that the collapse of exports to the Soviet Union in 1991 may have been responsible for about one third of the officially reported GDP fall in Czechoslovakia and Poland, and for more than half of the GDP fall in Bulgaria and Hungary, but the impact of the CMEA-induced export fall was much smaller. The impact of the Soviet trade shock on Romania was negligible. The results obtained suggest a smaller impact of the Soviet trade shock on Hungary and Poland, as compared with some other studies. The conclusions should, however, be treated with caution, because of many untested assumptions underlying the analysis.I would like to acknowledge helpful comments received on earlier drafts of the paper by Daniel Gross, Dieter Hesse, Gabor Oblath, and Mica Panic. The views expressed in the paper are, however, my own responsibility.     

The impact of carbon cap and trade regulation on congested electricity market equilibrium

Greenhouse gas regulation aimed at limiting the carbon emissions from the electric power industry will affect system operations and market outcomes. The impact and the efficacy of the regulatory policy depend on interactions of demand elasticity, transmission network, market structure, and strategic behavior of generators. This paper develops an equilibrium model of an oligopoly electricity market in conjunction with a cap-and-trade policy to study such interactions. We study their potential impacts on market and environmental outcomes which are demonstrated through a small network test case and a reduced WECC 225-bus model with a detailed representation of the California market. The results show that market structure and congestion can have a significant impact on the market performance and the environmental outcomes of the regulation while the interactions of such factors can lead to unintended consequences.     

Tariffs and Pareto optimality in international trade: The case of unemployment

This paper constructs a non-Walrasian two-country model of international trade, and investigates the possibility of policy combinations including tariffs which lead to Pareto superior trades. While such policies clearly do not exist in the Walrasian full employment situation, the paper shows that there may exist some in the case of unemployment. These policies are studied in various unemployment regimes, and it is shown that their effects depend both on the regime the economy is in, and on the degree of wage indexation.     

The impact of domestic regulations on international trade in services: Evidence from firm-level data

In order to promote international trade in services, most bilateral and multilateral trade agreements aim at eliminating the discriminatory barriers. However, domestic regulations, which apply to all firms alike and do not intend to exclude foreign sellers, are often seen as serious obstacles to cross-border trade in services. This paper proposes an assessment of the impact of these regulations on international trade of professional services. Our empirical analysis combines OECD measures of domestic regulation and detailed French data on firm-level bilateral export of professional services. Results show a robust and a sizeable negative impact of domestic regulations on both the decision to export and the values exported by each firm. This impact does not vary with firms’ productivity, and remains significant when we focus on the European Union market, where French exporters do not face discriminatory barriers. We conduct a quantification exercise based on our estimates and find an average ad-valorem tariff equivalent of domestic regulations of 60% in 2007. The ad-valorem tariff equivalent ranges from 26% to 88%, depending on the country.     

Economic and environmental impacts of trade liberalization: The case of Indonesia

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the environmental impacts of trade liberalization. This paper provides further discourse in this area with a study on Indonesia and its trade agreements with Japan (IJEPA) and ASEAN (AFTA). A static global CGE model, known as the Global Trade Analysis Project, was used to project the Indonesian economy to the year 2022, with and without tariff reforms agreed under the agreements. Environmental impacts are assessed using different pollution indicators—air, water and waste. The study suggests that Indonesia would grow rapidly over the period considered with a large deterioration in its environment. Following these, however, the agreements only have a marginal positive impact on Indonesia's output but with a noticeable increase in trade flows and signs of trade diversion. Overall AFTA has a greater impact on the Indonesian economy compared to IJEPA. Similarly, the impact of trade liberalization on the environment is marginal. On the whole, tariff reform is inducing air pollution and reducing water pollution. In conclusion, the study suggests that Indonesia's participation in the AFTA and IJEPA agreements is not likely to bring drastic changes to her economic and environmental performance.