Exporting out of poverty: Provincial poverty in Vietnam and U.S. market access

Can a developing country reduce poverty by gaining increased market access to a large, rich country? The 2001 U.S.–Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) provides an excellent opportunity to examine this question as, unlike other bilateral trade agreements, the U.S. tariff cuts were not influenced by Vietnamese industries. Using variation in the structure of the labor force across provinces prior to the trade agreement, I construct provincial measures of U.S. tariffs. To address concerns over confounding trends between changes in provincial poverty and changes in provincial tariffs I follow two approaches: controlling for trends based on observable initial conditions and differencing away time invariant trends using pre-BTA data. I find that provinces that were more exposed to the U.S. tariff cuts experienced faster decreases in poverty between 2002 and 2004. Additionally, I document that the movement of workers across provinces is limited in scale, particularly for those with low levels of education. Finally, I show that the most exposed provinces experienced faster wage growth for workers with low levels of education, but not for highly educated workers.     

Productivity,Employment and Growth in European Integration

We compare the evolution of key macroeconomic indices for the European Union (EU), viewed as a unified economy, with that of the USA and Japan for the period 1950–95, report the process of convergence in the EU, and analyze the effect of its potential enlargement through the accession of 10 Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC) that are in active negotiation for EU membership. The EU has followed a path of rising labor productivity, declining capital productivity and rising capital intensity typical of advanced capitalist economies. Its productivities in the 1990s lie between those of the USA and Japan. There is evidence of convergence of EU-15 relative labor productivity and capital intensity levels to those of the USA. Relative real wages also seem to be converging. Profit rates in all three economies fell, most rapidly before 1975. There is a general pattern of convergence in the EU members in the evolution of labor productivity, capital productivity, real wage, gross profit rate, investment per worker, consumption per worker and capital intensity. The evidence for a specific membership effect on convergence is weak. The CEEC have much lower relative labor and capital productivity than any other countries that have entered the EU. The process of development in the CEEC will have to follow an atypical path of increasing or constant capital productivity and rising labor productivity in order to converge to EU norms. EU membership might have a positive impact on the prospective economic growth in the CEEC in these respects, as the vehicle for the transmission of critical changes in technology and productive organization.     

Factor Substitution in U.S. Manufacturing: Does Plant Size Matter?

We use micro data for 10,412 U.S. manufacturing plants to estimate the degrees of factor substitution by industry and by plant size. We find that (1) capital, labor, energy and materials are substitutes in production, and (2) the degrees of substitution among inputs are quite similar across plant sizes in a majority of industries. Two important implications of these findings are that (1) small plants are typically as flexible as large plants in factor substitution; consequently, economic policies such energy conservation policies that result in rising energy prices would not cause negative effects on either large or small U.S. manufacturing plants; and (2) since energy and capital are found to be substitutes, the 1973 energy crisis is unlikely to be a significant factor contributing to the post 1973 productivity slowdown.     

On the origins of comparative advantage

This paper proposes a simple theory of international trade with endogenous productivity differences across countries. The core of our analysis lies in the determinants of the division of labor. We consider a world economy comprising two large countries, with a continuum of goods and one factor of production, labor. Each good is characterized by its complexity, defined as the number of tasks that must be performed to produce one unit. There are increasing returns to scale in the performance of each task, which creates gains from specialization, and uncertainty in the enforcement of each contract, which create transaction costs. The trade-off between these two forces pins down the size of productive teams across sectors in each country. Under free trade, the country where teams are larger specializes in the more complex goods. In our model, it is the country where the product of institutional quality and human per worker capital is larger. Hence, better institutions and more educated workers are complementary sources of comparative advantage in the more complex industries.     

中性还是偏向性技术变迁影响出口?——基于细分行业贸易数据的经验分析

运用Tobit模型对中国SITC-3位码行业出口数据进行实证分析,本文发现,生产率越高的行业出口能力越强,技术变迁带来的效率改进是出口增长的重要原因。但与中性技术变迁相比,偏向性技术变迁更适合解释中国不同行业的相对出口存在差异的问题。劳动和资本密集型行业发生的偏向资本技术变迁,是中国劳动密集型产品出口比重不断减小,而资本密集型产品出口比重不断增加的重要原因。偏向资本的技术变迁,以及由此引起的要素相对生产率改变,与要素相对禀赋一起,预示着我国动态比较优势的逐渐形成。     

A general equilibrium model of bilateral trade with strategic public investment in commercial infrastructure

We explore how public investment in commercial infrastructure affects the composition of trade between countries. To this end, we develop a model of bilateral trade in which two countries produce, consume, and trade a continuum of goods. Goods are produced by a single homogeneous factor, labor, the productivity of which depends on the quality of the country’s commercial infrastructure, broadly conceived to encompass transportation, communication, and power transmission networks; regulatory and legal institutions; and basic research and educational systems. Countries may improve the quality of their commercial infrastructures through increased public investment. However, returns on these investments are constrained by fixed ‘natural’ endowments, with the better-endowed country enjoying greater labor productivity for a given level of public investment. We begin by analyzing optimal investment in public infrastructure in one country when public investment by the trading partner is fixed. We find that, ceteris paribus, greater public investment in commercial infrastructure raises general labor productivity, leading to gains in workers’ real income. We then analyze a non-cooperative game in which both countries strategically vary public investment in commercial infrastructure. We find that, in a Nash game, the better-endowed country optimally spends more on infrastructure and produces the goods requiring the greatest labor productivity. However, in a Stackelberg game, the results are ambiguous. An empirical analysis based on recent international trade data supports our theoretical finding that investment in public infrastructure is positively related to the export of ‘high-end’ goods.     

The factor content of Chinese trade

This article demonstrates that the growth of China's exports in recent years is consistent with the Heckscher–Ohlin–Vanek (HOV) prediction of the factor content of trade based on international differences in factor endowments, after adjusting for substantial differences in factor-specific productivity. A comparison of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development input–output data in the year 2000 shows that China's labor productivity relative to the United States is the lowest in a sample of 33 diverse countries, although China's capital is more productive than US capital. This in turn demonstrates the importance of a factor-specific rather than factor-neutral productivity adjustment common in much of the HOV literature. The use of value-added data to measure factor usage helps to correct for unobserved differences in factor qualities and differences in productivity across sectors, as is demonstrated for China. China's low average labor productivity reflects the structure of the Chinese economy where most employment is still in the inefficient agriculture and service sectors, with only 11% of employment in the more modern export-oriented manufacturing sector. Due to a trade surplus, China exports both labor and capital but Leamer's (The Journal of Political Economy 1980;88: 495–503) test for trade-revealed factor abundance confirms that China is labor abundant even after substantial factor-specific productivity adjustments.     

我国对外直接投资的逆向技术外溢效应研究

本文选取我国对外直接投资比较集中且技术水平比较发达的九个国家(地区),利用我国和九国(地区)对外直接投资与技术创新的投入产出数据,测算我国的全要素生产率、母国和东道国的研发资本存量,实证分析了我国直接投资到这些国家(地区)所产生的逆向技术外溢程度。研究结果表明,我国通过对外直接投资渠道获得的国外研发资本存量能给母国带来正的技术外溢效应,只是由于我国对外直接投资相对吸引外资而言发展缓慢,因而其技术外溢效应相对较低。     

Productivity differences in an interdependent world

This paper studies cross-country differences in productivity from an open economy perspective by using a Helpman-Krugman-Heckscher-Ohlin model that embraces the single-cone model and a one-sector economy with factor deepening as particular cases. To estimate the model, I combine tools from development accounting and the factor content of trade literature. When simultaneously fitting data on income, factor prices and the factor content of trade, I find that the one-sector model is by far better supported by the data than the single-cone model. Rich countries have far higher productivities of human capital than poor ones, while differences in physical capital productivity are not related to income per worker. Finally, I estimate an aggregate elasticity of substitution between human and physical capital that is significantly below one.     

法律制度、资本流动与国际收支失衡——基于法与金融学的视角

本文通过对48个国家(地区)国际收支平衡表两个账户顺差、逆差年份的均值检验发现:普通法系和大陆法系国家在国际收支表现上存在显著的差异。普通法系国家更多地表现为资本账户顺差和经常账户逆差,而大陆法系国家正好相反。作者认为法律制度由于影响到国际间资本流动,从而它是造成国际收支失衡的原因之一。法律不仅通过影响一国金融市场发展程度从而作用于国际资本流动,同时它本身就是一个影响资本流动的独立因素。     

Home bias and high turnover: Dynamic portfolio choice with incomplete markets

Why do investors trade a lot in foreign assets and hold so little of them in their portfolios? This paper shows that both observations can arise naturally in the presence of nondiversifiable nontraded consumption risk when each country specializes in production, preferences exhibit consumption home bias, and asset markets are incomplete. Using a general equilibrium two-country, two-sector (tradable and nontradable) model of the world economy with production I show that low diversification occurs because variations in relative prices (i) increase the riskiness of foreign assets and (ii) facilitate risk-sharing across countries. Large and volatile capital flows are necessary to take advantage of international risk premia differentials that occur in response to productivity changes in the nontradable sector. I characterize the optimal portfolio holdings, the evolution of the investment opportunity set, the risk premium, and the dynamics of capital flows using a new methodology for solving dynamic general equilibrium models with incomplete markets and portfolio choice.     

On the similarity of country endowments

We study the production side of the Heckscher-Ohlin model empirically. The evidence we present suggests that the endowments of countries around the world are too dissimilar for all countries to be able to produce the same set of goods. In contrast, the endowments of the rich OECD countries are sufficiently similar, so that these countries do not have to specialize in different subsets of goods. Our findings have implications for a variety of issues ranging from the trade and wages debate to economic development. Our analysis relies on the lens condition of Deardorff [Journal of International Economics 36 (1994) 167-175] that compares country endowments with sectoral factor inputs. We mainly focus on the production factors capital and labor. We test the robustness of the results with different data sets and with corrections for international differences in productivity and human capital. We confirm the similarity of the developed OECD countries with skilled and unskilled labor data. We also investigate in detail the implications of measurement error and sectoral aggregation.     

黑龙江垦区粮食全要素生产率分析

本文运用数据包络分析-曼奎斯特指数法,对黑龙江垦区粮食生产全要素生产率予以度量,从时间变迁、地域分布与个体差异层面分析黑龙江垦区粮食生产技术资本深化的态势,认为提高黑龙江垦区持续稳定的粮食增产能力,应从制度设计创新和激励机制创新的角度,寻求促进粮食生产全要素生产率增长的突破口,走适度规模经营与技术进步相结合的道路。     

Factor Intensity,product switching,and productivity: Evidence from Chinese exporters

This paper analyzes how a firm's specialization in its core products after exporting affects its factor intensity and productivity. Using Chinese manufacturing firm data for the 1998–2007 period, we find that firms become less capital-intensive but more productive after exporting, compared to non-exporters that share similar ex ante characteristics. To rationalize these findings that contrast with existing studies, we develop a variant of the model by Bernard, Redding, and Schott (2010, 2011) to consider firms producing multiple products with varying capital intensity. The model predicts that when a firm in a labor-abundant country starts exporting, it specializes in its core competencies by allocating more resources to produce more labor-intensive products. Firm ex ante productivity is associated with a smaller decline in capital intensity after exporting. A sharper post-export decline in capital intensity is associated with a larger increase in measured total factor productivity. We find firm-level evidence supporting these predictions. Using transaction-level data for the 2000–2006 period, we show that Chinese new exporters add products that are less capital-intensive than their existing products and drop those that are more capital-intensive in subsequent years.     

The Determinants of SMEs' Market Share in 1991 – Taiwan Manufacturers

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have become increasingly popular in recent decades, having caused concern among scholars of various areas. Our line of research focuses on the determinants of SMEs' market share. This study explores the topic base on Taiwan's manufacturers' data collected in 1991. Our empirical results indicate that Taiwan has witnessed SMEs becoming prosperous in manufacturing industries with higher relative labor productivity, low entry barriers, prosperous subcontracting activities, and young ages. Our results indicate that, in the transitory process of industrial development, Taiwan's SMEs no longer can afford high wage payments when at the same time the quality of labor does not increase accordingly. As Taiwan approaches the status of a developed economy, the beneficiaries of export activities have changed. Unlike 1986, in 1991 there was a smaller share of SMEs in Taiwan's export oriented industries. Furthermore, SMEs benefited from their efforts to increase their automation status. The emphasis on issues concerning environmental protection proved to be another source of entry barrier that kept SMEs from prospering. Certain similarities arise when comparing our conclusions with those of the U.S., Canada, Germany, and Japan, all of whom represent industrialized countries. We can conclude that as Taiwan matures in her industrial development process, SMEs also struggle to a certain maturity in theirs.     

Factor rewards and the international migration of unskilled labor: a model with capital mobility

"Conventional economic wisdom holds that the migration of unskilled labor from less developed countries to neighboring developed countries should be expected to narrow the wage gap between those countries, and thereby reduce the incentive for further migration. [The authors suggest that] if capital is mobile internationally this reasoning may be inappropriate. Instead, emigration of unskilled labor out of the less developed country provides an incentive for capital to leave the country, too. As a consequence, wage rates move in the same direction in each country, and the gap between wage rates across countries even may increase."     

美国贸易逆差与经济增长相辅相成探析

美国的贸易逆差和美国经济增长相辅相成。美国贸易逆差持续扩大的背后是大量廉价商品的涌入和大量廉价资本的流入,它们降低了美国的通货膨胀率、增进了消费者的福利并加速了产业结构的升级,弥补了美国的投资-储蓄缺口,在一定程度上促进了美国的经济增长。而经济的稳定增长刺激了消费需求,又使美国贸易逆差进一步扩大。在经济全球化背景下,美国在发挥自己美元地位、资本市场以及信息技术等比较优势的同时,充分利用了他国的劳动力和资本要素并将其转化为自己的比较利益。     

How do Firms’ Outward FDI Strategies Relate to their Activity at Home? Empirical Evidence for the UK

This paper provides new empirical evidence on the relationship between the structure of firms’ overseas FDI and the performance and organisation of their home‐country operations in both manufacturing and business services. It addresses two questions. First, does sorting into multinational status on the basis of productivity extend to the scale of overseas activity? Second, is there evidence that off‐shoring to low‐wage countries has asymmetric effects on high and low‐skill activities in the home economy? The paper considers heterogeneity in firms’ outward FDI strategies and in their behaviour at home, distinguishing between low‐skill and high‐skill‐intensive activities. I differentiate between firms that invest in relatively low‐wage economies and hence might be engaged in vertical FDI, and those that only invest in high‐wage economies. I find that firms that invest in low‐wage economies simultaneously invest in a large number of high‐wage economies, employing complex FDI strategies. I add to existing evidence by demonstrating that selection into multinational status on productivity extends beyond the decision of whether or not to engage in FDI, to the geographic scope of overseas operations. This is consistent with the highest productivity firms being best able to overcome large fixed costs of establishing multiple overseas facilities. I find evidence consistent with differential effects of vertical FDI on firms’ high and low‐skill manufacturing activity in the UK. Relocating low‐skill activity to relatively low‐wage economies could enable a firm to expand output, with potential positive effects on investment, employment and output in complementary (high‐skill) activities at home. For firms investing in relatively low‐wage economies, I find that labour in these countries may substitute for relatively low‐skilled labour in the UK. In high‐skill manufacturing industries I find that multinationals that invest in low‐wage economies are larger, more capital intensive and more intensive in their use of intermediate inputs than other UK‐owned firms.     

Productivity and Wages

The United States’ output per capita is approximately 30 percent higher than in the developed European countries and Japan, and its productivity growth is among the highest in the world. Much of this record has been due to an environment that fosters growth in human and physical capital and innovation. Maintaining and enhancing this environment is key to the growth we need for our future. Flexibility in the labor force, fostering entrepreneurship, and high levels of education are major contributors to U.S. productivity increases, which have been tracked closely by growth of compensation. Future productivity growth will depend largely on incentives for investment in physical and human capital by appropriate tax policies, continuing a free flow of trade and foreign investment, and making sure that young Americans have the skills necessary to compete in the global economy. JEL Classification J2, J24