International Trade, OECD Membership, and Religion

Transaction costs in trade gravity equation are proxied by the distance that separates two trading partners, under the assumption that the distance elasticity is the same across all trading partners. We show that distance elasticity, however, critically depends on whether trading partners are industrial countries (i.e., members of the OECD) or share same religion. These heterogeneities are both statistically and economically significant. For instance, expected trade flows are the largest when an OECD member trades with a non-member and both are non-religious. Expected trade flows fall as much as by 62.9% between two non-religious, non-OECD members. Expected bilateral trade drops by 48.1% when both countries in the pair are OECD members while one is Christian and the other is Islamic. Both religion and OECD membership significantly affect the typical transaction costs implied by the gravity equation. JEL Classification Number: F13     

Market structure and market shares in the car industry

This paper examines empirically the impact of foreign competition, market structure and barriers to entry on the trade performance in the car industry. The pattern of international trade and structural characteristics of different markets are studied using OECD car industry data. By estimating fixed-effect regressions for major car producing countries, the results reveal that, for most countries, the market shares of exporters depend on cross-country differences in relative unit labor costs, differences in income levels, and differences in market structure.     

Does Cultural Distance Hinder Trade in Goods? A Comparative Study of Nine OECD Member Nations

We examine the effect of cultural distance, a proxy for the lack of a minimum reservoir of trust necessary to initiate and complete trade deals, on bilateral trade flows. Employing data for 67 countries that span the years 1996–2001, we estimate a series of modified gravity specifications and find that cultural dissimilarity between nations has an economically significant and consistently negative effect on aggregate and disaggregated trade flows; however, estimated effects vary in magnitude and economic significance across measures of trade and our cohort of OECD reference countries. The consistently negative influence of cultural distance indicates that policymakers may wish to consider mechanisms that enhance the build-up of trust and commitment when seeking to facilitate the initiation and completion of international trade deals. Our findings also imply that coefficient estimates from related studies that do not account for the trade-inhibiting effect of cultural distance may be biased.     

Are Financial Development and Trade Openness Complements or Substitutes?

This article studies the long‐ and short‐run relationships between financial development and trade openness. Using the pooled mean group estimator of Pesaran, Shin, and Smith (1999) for unbalanced panel data for 87 countries over the 1960–2005 period, our empirical results indicate that long‐run complementarity between financial development and trade openness coexists with short‐run substitutionarity between the two policy variables. But when splitting the data into OECD and non‐OECD country groups, this finding can be observed only in non‐OECD countries. For OECD countries, financial development has negligible effects on trade. In addition, we find nonlinearity in the relationship in that long‐run responses of trade decrease with financial development. The article further finds coexistence of negative trade effects of financial fragility and positive trade impacts of financial depth.     

Skills and changing comparative advantage: The case of Japan

Is the skill gap of net exports widening? This question is nontrivial for many industrial countries because, with the rapid growth of emerging countries, human capital is considered one of the most important sources of comparative advantage. Theoretically, however, the answer is not necessarily obvious because of changing comparative advantage. This paper attempts to answer this question by extending the analysis of Wolff (2003) and by focusing on one of the largest OECD countries, Japan, for the period 1980–2005. The results indicate that the answer to the above question may well be “no.” Although Japan is still a net exporter of skill-intensive goods, the skill gap of net exports has been narrowing since the mid-1990s, mainly as a result of the changes in the composition of trade. This implies that some OECD countries, including Japan, may have been losing their comparative advantage in skill-intensive goods in recent years.     

Demand, comparative advantage and economic geography in international trade: Evidence from the OECD

Demand, Comparative Advantage and Economic Geography in International Trade: Evidence from the OECD. — This paper examines the influence of demand on the pattern of net trade for 17 OECD countries. It is found that demand differences are important as a cause of international trade. In fact, for the majority of countries, demand factors explain more of the net trade pattern than do factor proportions. The evidence offers some support for the modern geography and trade theories: high domestic demand in an industry leads to a net export for the majority of cases. The evidence is, however, not clear-cut. Moreover, a demand bias in favour of domestic varieties leads to a net export. Here, the evidence is clear-cut.     

Penetration of industrial country markets by agricultural products from developing countries

About 55% of food and about 60% of non-food agricultural exports of the developing countries are sold in industrial country markets. Market access is therefore important.While the developing countries have been able to increase the market penetration of their manufactured exports in industrial countries at a remarkable rate of about 8% in the 1970s, market penetration in agricultural commodities has generally been less successful.From 1970 to 1980 the developing countries were able to increase their market penetration in processed agricultural commodities from 3.5 to 3.7%, which amounts to an average annual increase of only 0.6%. In basic agricultural products like sugar, maize, tomatoes and beef they even incurred losses in their market share that corresponded to an increase in the degree of self-sufficiency (and probably of protective trade barriers) of the industrial countries, in particular the EC.     

The Dynamics of International Trade Patterns

This paper introduces new dynamic measures for examining changes in international trade patterns. Using data for 20 OECD countries over the 1980–2000 period, we show that inter-industry trade changes contrary to countries’ previous specialization are frequently the dominant form of trade expansion. The econometric analysis indicates that the observed changes in trade patterns were explained by initial endowments of human-capital and industry-specific changes in labour productivity and labour costs. The results also suggest that trade liberalization induced an increase in the previous specialization of larger OECD economies in industries with increasing returns to scale. JEL no. F1, O33, O50     

Innovations for reaching the green sustainable development goals –where will they come from?

Reaching the sustainable development goals needs innovations. This paper addresses the dynamics of green energy and resource efficiency innovations, and looks at the positioning of countries from the North and emerging economies. We use indicators for both general innovation capabilities and specific green technology capabilities. Data on general innovation capabilities reveal that the traditional OECD countries, by and large, still possess advantages compared to Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs). Literature and Patent indicators reveal that the innovation dynamics are particularly high for publications. Literature and exports indicators reveal that the South has been catching up substantially. With regard to patents, some countries of the South are catching up, but the North is still cleary leading. A detailed analysis of co-patenting and country-to-country trade data reveals a more differentiated picture: Leading countries from Europe such as Germany as still specializing on serving the markets of traditional OECD countries. Japan and Korea are very reluctant with regard to co-patenting, but specialize in exporting to China. South-South trade in green technologies is the fastest growing market segment. However, countries of the South are pursuing a differentiated strategy: Mexico is highly integrated into the US economy. Singapore and South Korea have been catching up and provide technologies especially for China. China itself is following a double strategy, with absorbing technology from the North in order to compete on markets of the North on the one hand, but increasingly specializing on becoming lead supplier for countries of the South on the other hand. The other technology providers from the South are mainly specializing in supplying other countries from the South. Thus, a segmentation of the market is likely, with green sustainability innovations in the South more likely originating in the South as well, and China being an important country to adapt knowledge from the North to the needs of the South.     

Intra-Industry Trade Revisited: A Note

This short note revisits the relative importance of intra- and inter-industry trade by using the Grubel-Lloyd formula as a measure of intra-industry trade to the country??s manufacturing trade (sections 5?C8 of the SITC) where each industry is the four digit classification. Measures for a country??s total trade, as well as its bilateral trade with specific countries are utilized. The results demonstrate that intra-industry trade dominates trade among the OECD countries, while inter-industry trade dominates North-South and South-South trade.     

蓝色壁垒对我国企业出口的影响及对策

发达国家在劳工标准上对发展中国家出口的产品采取了多种形式的贸易管制,构成新贸易壁垒,即蓝色壁垒。文章首先对蓝色壁垒及相关标准进行了简单介绍,然后深入探讨蓝色壁垒及其相关标准,最后就它们对我国企业出口的积极和消极影响进行了分析,并对如何应对它们给我国企业出口带来的冲击提出几项措施,以期达到在面对发达国家的蓝色壁垒时,能够针对其实施相应的措施,以提高我国企业出口在国际贸易中的地位和竞争力,最终突破蓝色壁垒。     

The Gravity Equation in International Trade in Services

The main purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of various factors on bilateral services trade, relative to that on bilateral goods trade. To accomplish this purpose, using the standard gravity model, we ran regressions on bilateral services trade and goods trade between 10 OECD member countries and other economies (including OECD member and nonmember countries) for the years 1999 and 2000. One main and interesting result is that services trade is better predicted by gravity equations than goods trade. Another interesting result is that there is a complementary relationship between goods exports and services imports. JEL no. F10, F20, L51, F80     

中外贸易摩擦的新动向及应对战略

随着中国在世界贸易中地位的提高,贸易摩擦问题日益凸显。其新动向主要表现为：摩擦手段从传统贸易壁垒转向新贸易壁垒,摩擦对象从发达国家向发展中国家蔓延,贸易摩擦争端的内容迅速扩大、涵盖众多产品,贸易摩擦领域从微观层面向制度层面延伸。应对中外贸易摩擦的新动向,不仅要客观地看待贸易保护主义,更要重视贸易摩擦的政治解决途径,同时注重提高国内企业市场竞争能力,不断完善市场经济制度。     

Foreign debt,global liquidity,and fiscal sustainability

We empirically investigate fiscal sustainability by comparing countries in the different economic groups with a dataset covering 180 countries during the period from 1980 to 2015. As the OECD countries have higher international debt ratio than other countries, they have higher probability to be exposed to global risk factors. Non-OECD countries turn out to be more fiscally solvent than OECD countries due to their limited access to international financial market. However, we also find that better access to international liquidity increases fiscal sustainability within the sample of OECD countries, while it does not improve the fiscal solvency in case of non-OECD countries.     

Impact of ICT on trade in different technology groups: analysis and implications

The link between ICT use and trade flows has been widely discussed in the literature. It has been argued that the use of ICT contributes to the fall of trade costs. The analysis presented identifies the role of a specific ICT variable, namely the extent of use of Internet by the business community, in international trade. The export flows between 40 countries (OECD countries plus Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa) are analyzed. The results are presented for different technology groups of products, from high-tech to low-tech. The relationship between the use of Internet and trade in ICT goods is also considered.     

Export survival and the dynamics of experience

This paper focuses on developing countries’ pioneer exports to the OECD and obtains several important results on export dynamics, linking export experience and export survival. Using product level data at the SITC 5-digit level for 114 developing countries over the 1962–2009 period, we show that prior export experience obtained in non-OECD markets significantly increases survival of pioneer exports toward the OECD. The experience does not need to last long, as gaining experience for more than two years does not confer any additional benefit. The effect of experience depreciates rapidly with time: a break in export experience prior to entering the OECD reduces the advantage on survival. Finally, the role of prior export experience is particularly relevant for survival in the first two years upon entry into the OECD. The geographic dynamic of export experience reveals that experience is acquired in neighboring, easy to access markets before reaching more distant, richer partners and ultimately serving the OECD with a higher probability of survival.     

日本技术性贸易壁垒的特点及应对策略

随着我国对外贸易的迅速发展，我国出口产品遭遇国外技术性贸易壁垒的限制也在不断增加，技术性贸易壁垒已成为阻碍我国出口贸易发展的第一大非关税壁垒。作为WTO的成员国，当今世界上经济和科技第二发达的日本，为了保护其国内市场，对进口产品制定了复杂苛刻的技术标准，这不仅阻碍了我国出口贸易的扩大，而且严重影响了中日经贸关系的正常发展。因此，我们要针对日本技术性贸易壁垒的限制措施加以研究，从根源上查找原因，寻找对策，进而制定出我国对外贸易跨越日本技术性贸易壁垒限制的良策。     

Trade Barriers and the Collapse of World Trade During the Great Depression

Using panel data estimates of export and import equations for 17 countries in the interwar period, this paper estimates the effects of increasing tariff and nontariff trade barriers on worldwide trade over the period 1929 to 1932. The estimates suggest that real world trade contracted approximately 14% because of declining income, 8% as a result of discretionary increases in tariff rates, 5% owing to deflation-induced tariff increases, and a further 6% because of the imposition of nontariff barriers. Allowing for feedback effects from trade barriers on income and prices, discretionary impositions of trade barriers contributed about the same to the trade collapse as the diminishing nominal income.     

The Small Open-Economy New Keynesian Phillips Curve: Empirical Evidence and Implied Inflation Dynamics

In this paper we apply GMM estimation to assess the relevance of domestic versus external determinants of CPI inflation dynamics in a sample of OECD countries typically classified as open economies. The analysis is based on a variant of the small open-economy New Keynesian Phillips Curve derived in Galí and Monacelli (Rev Econ Stud 72:707–734, 2005), where the novel feature is that expectations about fluctuations in the terms of trade enter explicitly. For most countries in our sample the expected relative change in the terms of trade emerges as the more relevant inflation driver than the contemporaneous domestic output gap.     

Structural Breaks and Spatial Linkages in FDI: Further Evidence in OECD Countries

This paper evaluates the knowledge–capital model (KCM) of foreign direct investment (FDI) as defined by Braconier et al. (Rev Int Econ 13(4):770-786, 2005). The model predicts that there are both horizontal and vertical motivations for engaging in FDI. The horizontal motives regard access to new markets in the case of trade frictions, whereas the vertical motivations imply that multinational enterprises seek to take advantage of relative skill differences in different countries. The impact of the vertical component in the KCM has been largely debated and thereby is of the greatest interest. Another issue addressed in the study is the relevance of spatial interdependencies in FDI flow. To check for these kinds of FDI determinants the KCM model is augmented with a surrounding market potential and a spatial lag term. By using large data sets for FDI stocks among OECD countries from 1982 to 2003 along with structural breaks and spatial econometric techniques, the paper evaluates the significance of traditional and spatial FDI determinants. The results show that the vertical component is indeed important, even for FDI among OECD countries, but that this importance is clearly decreasing over time. The findings point towards the existence of spatial linkages that are also compatible with export-platform motivations.