Opening of China's Trade,Labour Market Reform and Impact on Rural Wages

Government policy in China supports urban wages at the expense of returns to farm labour. A model is developed to estimate how WTO accession and complementary labour market reform will influence factor returns in China. With WTO membership, a larger cut in manufacturing tariffs compared to agriculture will improve agriculture's terms of trade and will raise the agricultural wage. Complementary labour market reforms will further boost farm wages as labour exits agriculture in large numbers. We estimate that WTO membership and complementary labour market reforms will result in a decline in the agricultural labour force by about 25 per cent.     

Firm R&D,Processing Trade and Input Trade Liberalisation: Evidence from Chinese Firms

This paper examines the impact of input trade liberalisation on firm R&D activity by taking China's accession to the WTO as a quasi‐natural experiment. Different from ordinary imports, processing imports in China enjoy zero tariffs and are not affected by input trade liberalisation due to the WTO accession. The paper uses disaggregated firm‐level production data and transaction‐level trade data to perform difference‐in‐difference analysis by taking processing import firms as a control group. An intensive empirical search shows that after China's accession to the WTO, input trade liberalisation fostered firm R&D significantly. The findings are robust to different measures and various empirical specifications.     

Input tariff liberalisation and servitisation in manufacturing: Evidence from China's WTO accession

This paper links the sharp drop in China's manufacturing servitisation (MS) in early 21st century to China's accession to WTO featured by conspicuous input trade liberalisation (ITL). The results show that manufacturing industries exposed to higher degree of ITL suffer more MS declines after China's accession to the WTO. Heterogeneous analysis shows that industries with high import intensity, capital intensity or technology intensity suffer more MS declines following input trade liberalisation. Further analysis shows that input trade liberalisation increases the import of intermediate inputs while significantly reduces the proportion of service imports for manufacturing industries. The results are robust to a series of robustness checks.     

Trade liberalisation and domestic brands: Evidence from China's accession to the WTO

In this paper, we examine how trade liberalisation affects firms' branding behaviours. We investigate this question with China's accession to the WTO in late 2001. We find that firms in sectors with large import tariff reductions discontinue more trademarks. Meanwhile, these firms file more trademark applications and their total number of effective trademarks increases after trade liberalisation. This growth in trademarks is mainly driven by large firms, as measured by the number of employees. In fact, small firms' applications and effective trademarks decline during trade liberalisation. It is also found that trademark applications are mainly filed for the traditionally non-dominant products of industries. We provide a conceptual model that incorporates the channels through which both passive and active responses occur.     

开放经济条件下中国收入分配状况分析——对中国入世1O周年的总结与反思

本文研究了改革开放30年尤其是入世10年来中国参与经济全球化及其对收入差距的影响情况。结果发现,贸易全球化短期内会加剧中国的收入差距,我们将其原因归结为“人口红利陷阱”,但在长期内贸易参与贸易全球化将有助于缩小中国的收入差距;生产与投资的全球化也会扩大收入差距,而金融发展与深化对中国收入分配差距的影响最大;技术进步、受教育程度提高以及劳动力由低阶部门向高阶部门的转移则在一定程度上可以缓解收入差距过大。虽然文章发现中国参与全球化加剧了收入分配差距,但同时认为本质是由于中国开放程度依然不高、市场化程度依然较低导致,建议中国需要进一步推进改革开放,加快融入全球化的步伐,同时加快服务业的发展,加大科研投入力度、提高高等教育普及程度,从而缩小收入差距。     

我国入世后工业品贸易中污染流的变化分析

利用投入产出分析方法,选用工业SO2为污染指标,分部门对我国入世后工业品贸易中污染流的变化进行了研究。借鉴贸易的环境效应的分析框架,分析了入世后工业品贸易中污染流变化的原因。结果表明,2001-2004年,我国工业品贸易中的污染流为负;2005年,我国工业品贸易中的污染流为正。贸易规模扩大在污染流的增加中起了主要作用,贸易结构的改变也在一定程度上导致了我国污染流入的增加。     

中国如何应对国外反倾销

反倾销是国际贸易中一个重要的不可忽略的问题,它不但影响着我国的出口贸易环境,也关系到国内产业发展与经济安全.在中国加入世贸组织和经济全球化趋势不断发展的今天,中国仍然是世界上遭受反倾销最多的国家,并且越来越多的发展中国家和地区也加入了对中国反倾销的队伍中.国外对中国产品的反倾销对中国出口产品造成了巨大的伤害,因此,如何应对反倾销成为中国企业面临的重大问题,同时也是力争创造国际竞争优势企业的必修课.     

WTO后过渡期谈我国现代物流应对措施

随着全球经济一体化和我国加入WTO,我国对外贸易的高速增长已成为我国经济发展的重要推动力。然而随着国际贸易中货物所带来的国际物流量的上升,低效率的物流体系已经成为我国国际贸易和经济发展的一大瓶颈。本文分析WTO后过渡期我国物流业面临的机遇和挑战,探求新形势下我国现代物流的应对措施。     

WTO subsidy rules and tariff liberalization: evidence from accession of China

Countries increasingly rely on subsidies to assist their producers leading to concerns about their potential misuse. The WTO regulates its members’ subsidies by defining subsidies that are permissible, as well as by providing means to retaliate against subsidies of partner countries if these subsidies hurt one's interest. However, these subsidy rules might have an unintended effect. As both subsidies and tariffs are substitute instruments of protection, tighter subsidy rules might lead to a decrease in the pace of tariff liberalization. In this paper, we present first empirical evidence in support of this prediction. Using China's accession to the WTO in 2001 as a case study, we show that China's accession to the WTO was associated with a relative increase in its tariffs for products that faced a higher threat of retaliation against subsidies. More importantly, we also show that increases in tariff were larger in products with higher potential costs imposed by retaliation. Finally, we include several robustness tests as well as conduct two counterfactual exercises to verify that the results we obtain are indeed due to perceived threat of retaliation against subsidies.     

我国对外文化贸易的现状、问题及对策研究

在经济全球化和我国加入WTO的新形势下,我国对外贸易获得飞速发展,然而对外文化贸易却远远落后于国家对外贸易的总体增幅,存在逆差严重、结构不合理、知识产权侵权问题严重、科技水平和创新能力不高等问题,为减少逆差,促进文化贸易发展,我们应根据加入WTO承诺,保护我国文化安全和知识产权,转变政府职能,拓展对外文化交流和传播渠道,注重技术创新,提高文化产业科技含量,实施市场营销和品牌战略,积极开拓国际市场。     

贸易增长与工资差距(1990～2009)——基于劳动禀赋结构和技术效应结构的经验研究

文章从劳动禀赋结构和技术效应结构视角建立模型,研究中国近20年贸易增长与工资差距的关系。回归、Granger检验和Chow突变点分析发现:工资差距主要受与人均GNI更高国家之间贸易占贸易总额比率的影响,两者呈负相关关系;与低技能劳动密集型产品的产值占GDP比重关系密切;同时也和加工贸易、高新技术产品贸易的增长有显著的负的线性相关关系;事实表面上有悖于实际却佐证了要素价格均等化理论和S-S定理,而被广为引用的中间产品贸易模型和贸易的科技进步效应理论在某个角度上却缺乏经验支持;全球化与"赶超"式发展必然导致工资差距进一步扩大。     

Does Taiwan's entry into the WTO truly reduce its agricultural output values?

This study has used the time series data of Australia, China, Denmark, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, the Philippines, South Korea, Spain, and the United States from the World Bank to estimate the agricultural economic shock of Taiwan's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). We have adopted the recently developed panel data approach for policy evaluation to construct the annual agricultural growth path of Taiwan, which is mainly based on the cross-sectional correlations between the domestic and international agricultural trade markets in the absence of Taiwan's entry into the WTO. Our results have not only revealed the importance of ex post counterfactual analysis, but also provided empirical evidence that the agricultural economic shock is not as severe as predicted by many ex ante studies. Based on these results, we have concluded that the outcome may have arisen from the slow progress of achieving agricultural trade liberalization under the WTO and the Taiwanese Government's effective adoption of phase-in periods and relative adjustment policies.     

Informality,tariffs and wealth

This article analyzes the interaction between changes in tariff protection, informality, inequality and aggregate income. First, we describe some new empirical evidence on informality, the formal/informal wage gap and trade openness in Latin American countries. Then we present a simple model characterized by three (empirically based) assumptions: (1) agents consume both formal and informal goods; (2) the government uses tariff revenues to purchase formal goods; (3) informality is a voluntary phenomenon. The model predicts that tariff reduction increases informality and wage inequality and that the maximization of income requires a positive level of tariff protection. The model's results are shown to be consistent with the empirical evidence concerning Latin American countries.     

Trade, wages, and the political economy of trade protection: evidence from the Colombian trade reforms

Worker industry affiliation plays a crucial role in how trade policy affects wages in many trade models. Yet, most research has focused on how trade policy affects wages by altering the economy-wide returns to a specific worker characteristic (i.e., skill or education) rather than through worker industry affiliation. This paper exploits drastic trade liberalizations in Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s to investigate the relationship between protection and industry wage premiums. We relate wage premiums to trade policy in an empirical framework that accounts for the political economy of trade protection. Accounting for time-invariant political economy factors is critical. When we do not control for unobserved time-invariant industry characteristics, we find that workers in protected sectors earn less than workers with similar observable characteristics in unprotected sectors. Allowing for industry fixed effects reverses the result: trade protection increases relative wages. This positive relationship persists when we instrument for tariff changes. Our results are in line with short- and medium-run models of trade where labor is immobile across sectors or, alternatively, with the existence of industry rents that are reduced by trade liberalization. In the context of the current debate on the rising income inequality in developing countries, our findings point to a source of disparity beyond the well-documented rise in the economy-wide skill premium: because tariff reductions were proportionately larger in sectors employing a high fraction of less-skilled workers, the decrease in the wage premiums in these sectors affected such workers disproportionately.     

The effect of within-country inequality on international trade and investment agreements

There is anecdotal evidence suggesting that those losing from globalization influence policy makers to decrease the openness of their countries to globalization, as evidenced by signing international trade and investment agreements. Surprisingly, this influence has never been examined empirically. This study provides novel empirical evidence demonstrating that greater within-country inequality, our proxy for 'perceived losses' from globalization, decreases countries' propensity to sign regional trade and investment agreements. Our findings support the argument that the existence of 'losers' from globalization can be detrimental for continued globalization. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first extensive econometric empirical evidence of the influence of within-country inequality on countries' willingness to sign international trade and investment agreements, as means to increase their global economic integration.     

From the Soviet Union to the European Union: Estonian Trade Policy, 1991–2000

This paper examines the political economy of Estonian trade policy in the 1990s. Estonia is a unique case in the world economy, in that the country rapidly implemented unilateral free trade after regaining independence and sustained it right through the 1990s. We analyse the circumstances, interests, ideas and institutions that have shaped Estonian trade policy during the past decade. Our stress is on institutions, particularly the national decision‐making setting for trade policy. Through this prism we try to understand how a free trade regime was implemented and sustained, and what this experience suggests for the feasibility of tree trade elsewhere. We also look at the increasingly ‘multi‐track’ nature of Estonian trade policy through bilateral free trade agreements, WTO accession and, especially, the movement towards EU accession. Although the other trade policy tracks to some extent provide a lockin for unilateral reforms, we argue that EU accession is undermining the simple, classical liberal trade policy regime that existed during the 1990s.     

The interface of market and nonmarket strategies: Political ties and strategic competitive actions

We focus on corporate political connections as a critical nonmarket strategy and propose that political ties can facilitate firms’ strategic competitive actions but may also hurt the outcomes of such actions, depending on whether the ties are associated to central versus local political actors. Studying China's television manufacturers at the onset of deregulation and globalization, we find that central and local political ties have contrasting effects on firms’ competitive actions and their performance outcomes. To further shed light on theoretical mechanisms, we examine the impact of China's WTO accession on firm actions and contrast domestic-based and internationalization competitive actions.     

Input trade liberalisation,institution and markup: Evidence from China's accession to the WTO

This paper investigates the effects of input trade liberalisation on firm markups and assesses how institutional environment affects such impacts by using Chinese firm‐level data. To identify the causal effects, we exploit the quasi‐natural experiment of China's WTO accession in 2001 and perform difference‐in‐differences estimation. The results show that input tariff liberalisation leads to a substantial increase in firm markups, and institutional environment significantly strengthens such an impact. We further uncover the underlying mechanisms through which input tariff liberalisation boosts firm markups, and show that both price and cost channels work for the input tariff cut effect on firm markups, of which the latter is much more important. In addition, we also demonstrate that input tariff cut significantly fosters aggregate markup growth, and the reallocation effect is found to be an important channel through which input tariff liberalisation boosts aggregate markup growth.     

Trade and Wage Inequality: Local versus Global Comparative Advantages

This paper shows that disentangling the local and global dimensions of trade can be crucial to get a better understanding of the trade impact on wage inequality. In particular, it allows us to reconcile the empirical evidence with the Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson predictions. Our focus here is on Italy. As for local trade – within its own cone of diversification – Italy is specialised in the production of unskill‐intensive goods, while for global trade – with respect to the other cone of diversification – it is mainly specialised in the production of skill‐intensive goods. On the evidence of these specialisation patterns, we point out that the local trade has a strong impact on wage inequality. In particular, in line with the Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson predictions, the local export performance reduces wage inequality as it favours blue‐collar workers. As for global trade, it affects and increases wage inequality through the export channel, again consistent with the Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson predictions.