Industry specialization, diversification, churning, and unemployment in Chinese cities

This paper studies how industry specialization, diversification, and churning affect unemployment rates in Chinese cities. Using a city level panel data set from 1997 to 2006, we find that in contrast to the evidence from developed countries, industry diversity is positively and significantly associated with unemployment rates, possibly due to the high degree of industry churning during the sample period. We also find that the specialization of construction industry and wholesale and retail trade industry can significantly decrease unemployment rate, but specializing in finance industry increases unemployment rate. Urban growth, market maturity measured by the proportion of private sector employment, and human capital can decrease unemployment rate. The effect of industry structure on unemployment instability is also discussed.     

Trade Specialization in Latin America: The Impact of China and India

This paper examines the extent to which the growth of China and India in world markets is affecting the patterns of trade specialization in Latin American (LA) economies. We construct a measure of Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) by 3-digit ISIC sector, country, and year. This RCA accounts for both imports and exports. The empirical analyses explore the correlation between the RCAs of LA and the two Asian economies. Econometric estimates suggest that the specialization pattern of LA—with the exception of Mexico—has been moving in opposite direction to the trade specialization pattern of China and India. Labor-intensive sectors (both unskilled and skilled) probably have been negatively affected by the growing presence of China and India in world markets, while natural resource and scientific knowledge intensive sectors have probably benefited from China and India’s growth since 1990. JEL no.  F10, F14     

从当前的人民币汇率波动看人民币国际化

开放贸易项下人民币结算,使得香港离岸人民币(CNH)外汇市场得以与大陆在岸人民币(CNY)外汇市场并存。由于同时存在两个人民币外汇市场和两个人民币汇率,且资金可以相对自由地流动,套利活动和套汇活动得以大行其道。最近CNY的贬值主要是套汇和套利发生方向性逆转的结果。     

Can Fundamentals Explain Cross-Country Correlations of Asset Returns?

Previous studies show that existing correlations between national returns are higher than correlations between the national growth rates of fundamental variables. This paper examines the ability of intertemporal asset pricing models to explain cross-country correlations of national returns. We find that when capital markets are assumed to be fully integrated, a simple intertemporal general equilibrium model is able to explain the observed co-variability of domestic asset returns but generates too little variability in those returns. Results improve considerably if a less restrictive version is employed. In that setting, both domestic variability and cross-country co-variability of returns are consistent with capital market integration. JEL no. G12, G15, E44     

Vintage capital and the diffusion of clean technologies

We develop a general equilibrium vintage capital model with energy‐saving technological progress and an explicit energy sector to study the impact of investment subsidies on equilibrium investment and output. Energy and capital are assumed to be complementary in the production process. New machines are less energy‐consuming and scrapping is endogenous. Two polar market structures are considered for the energy market: free entry and natural monopoly. First, it is shown that investment subsidies may induce a larger equilibrium investment into cleaner technologies either under free entry or natural monopoly. However, in the latter case, this happens if and only if the average cost is decreasing fast enough. Second, larger diffusion rates do not necessarily mean lower energy consumption at equilibrium, which may explain certain empirical observations.     

On the optimal external tariff of a free trade area with internal market integration

Previous analyses of free trade areas suggest that member countries reduce external tariffs to the level that improves welfare of non-member countries. Using an oligopoly model with product differentiation, this paper shows that when a free trade area entails endogenous change from segmented to integrated markets for internally produced goods, external tariffs become strategic complements and their equilibrium level is higher than in the market segmentation case. In this case, the non-member may lose from the formation of free trade area whereas each member gains more.     

Enhancing productive capabilities through intra-regional trade and cross-border investments in Southern Africa

Regional integration is an important factor for enabling knowledge flows between economies and enhancing the capacity of firms within the integrated block to benefit from local knowledge spillovers. This study analyses data on economic interactions between Botswana and its technologically more advanced southern neighbour, South Africa, to examine the extent to which knowledge flows facilitated by geographical proximity translate into fostering technological learning and productivity of manufacturing firms. Industry- and firm-level data on bilateral capital goods trade and investments over the period 1991–2013 are used to assess the technological learning of the manufacturing sector in Botswana. This study also applies the Hunt, J, &; Tybout, J (1999. Does Promoting High-Tech Products Spur Development? FEEM Working Paper REG 42. Milan: Fondazione Eni EnricoMattei) technological sophistication framework to analyse the role played by regional trade and investment flows between the economies of South Africa and Botswana in the skills intensification of manufacturing firms. Skills intensity decomposition reveals that Botswana’s manufacturing technical intensity has been positively influenced by the extent of capital goods trade and investment linkages with South African economy.     

金融发展、国际分工与全球失衡

本文以金融发展的跨国差异为基本前提,通过建立包含资本中间品生产的宏观经济框架,分析了金融发展在国际分工模式形成过程中的作用和不同分工模式对全球贸易失衡的影响。根据模型可以得到两个基本结论:第一,金融发展差异是贸易产生的重要原因,金融发展差异提高通过加大相对价格差异提高了贸易量,但贸易收支是平衡的;第二,给定贸易与对外直接投资的成本形态,一旦金融发展水平超过某一特定临界值,国家间的分工就会由传统的水平分工转化为产品内垂直分工,贸易不平衡随之产生并逐渐扩大。利用分行业贸易数据对模型进行检验后认为模型具有合理性。     

Hukou system reforms and skilled-unskilled wage inequality in China

In China, rural migrant workers usually cannot get fair treatment due to the hukou system. This paper investigates how hukou system reforms affect the skilled-unskilled wage inequality through the general equilibrium approach. In the basic model, we find that an increase in the strength of hukou system reforms will narrow down the wage inequality if the urban skilled sector is more capital intensive than the urban unskilled sector. In addition, we separately extend the basic model by introducing the endogenous minimum wage and an informal sector, and find that in these two extended cases the main results of the basic model will conditionally or unconditionally hold. When we consider some empirical evidences in China, our models predict that an increase in the strength of hukou system reforms will reduce the wage inequality.     

The Stock Market,Monetary Policy,and Economic Development

In this article, we examine the impact of financial market development on the level of economic development. In particular, we explore this issue in a setting where individuals face idiosyncratic risk. Incomplete information also provides a transaction role for money so that monetary policy can be studied. While an active banking sector promotes risk sharing, we incorporate a market for equity by allowing individuals to trade capital across generations. In this manner, each asset and financial market in our model fulfills a distinct economic function. Consistent with recent empirical work, we find that the impact of access to a stock market may be indeterminate—the economy may respond with significant gains in capital accumulation and risk sharing, or there may be relatively little impact. We also show that the effects of monetary policy vary across the level of financial development. In economies with small stock markets, increasing the amount of liquidity will cause capital accumulation to decline. By comparison, in advanced economies, capital accumulation improves.     

A political economy theory of foreign investment: An alternative approach

The present paper uses the political economy model developed by Grossman and Helpman and studies the equilibrium of a game between the two countries; the home country, which exercises the trade policy for maximizing its objective function, and the foreign country, which controls the level of its capital export for the similar purpose. It is shown that if the production costs of the two countries are identical, the equilibrium of the game in which the two countries make simultaneous move will very likely achieve free trade.     

Sino-US trade balance from national income perspective and global income chains

ABSTRACT

Trade volume biases trade benefits under the background of economic globalization. Employing the input-output technique, important progress has been made in research on trade in value-added. It is noteworthy that capital globalization is one of the important manifestations of economic globalization. Owing to the ever-increasing transnational flow of capital, mainly by foreign direct investment (FDI), production of exports shows great dependence on foreign capital. A large part of value-added in exports are obtained by foreign factors owners, since foreign-invested enterprises account for a large proportion in host country’s total exports, which is foreign income. The ultimate goal of trade is to boost national income. We propose to study trade benefits and trade balance from national income perspective, and further introduce the concept of global income chains to reveal economic benefits distribution within international specialization.     

Outsourcing and skill-specific employment in a small economy: Austria after the fall of the Iron Curtain

We set up a model, in which firms in a small industrializedcountry outsource part of their production to a foreign economy,which is rich in low-skilled labour. We analyse, how a declinein trade costs affects outsourcing activities and the productionstructure in the small economy. A stimulation of cross-borderoutsourcing raises wage dispersion and, if labour markets areunionized, also the employment of high-skilled relative to low-skilledlabour. Using a panel of Austrian industries, we find, first,that decreasing trade barriers—as observed after the fallof the Iron Curtain—indeed stimulate outsourcing to Centraland Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and, second,that outsourcing to these countries significantly shifts relativeemployment in favour of high-skilled labour.     

Learning and the capital goods sector under free trade: The case of Hongkong

Attention is focused on technological change and attendant learning processes in the more industrialized Third World countries. The importance of relatively simple learning processes is stressed and the conditions necessary for facilitating more complex forms of learning - particularly protection and promotion - are examined. Here it is shown that the capital goods sector is of central importance. The case-study material deals with the machine- producing sector in Hong Kong, chosen as the representative case of free trade and minimal government intervention, and comparison is made with learning processes in a number of other more industrialized Third World Countries including India, Argentina and Taiwan. In the final section the implications of the discussion of learning for theories and techniques of investment allocation - including social cost-benefit analysis, the effective rate of protection and the related domestic cost of foreign exchange - are examined.     

Distortions at the Border; Integration Inland: Assessing the Effect of WTO Accession on China's Agriculture

The main goal of the paper is to address the impact of the WTO on China's agricultural sector. To accomplish this goal we address two sets of issues. First, we seek to provide measures of the distortions in China's agricultural sector at a time prior to the nation's accession to WTO. This is accomplished by estimating the nominal rates of protection (NPRs) of the agricultural sector's major commodities using a new methodology to account for grain quality differences within China and between China and the world market. Second, we seek to assess how well integrated China's markets are in order to understand which areas of the country and which segments of the farming population will likely be isolated from, or affected by, the changes that WTO will bring. We find that NPRs differ among commodities. Some of China's agricultural commodities are well above and others are well below world market prices. We also find that if increased imports or exports affect China's domestic price at the border, its own domestic markets are mostly integrated so that price shifts in one area will affect prices in most of the rest of China. Our analysis finds, however, that a number of policy and structural factors limit the overall size of the shock.     

日本与东盟贸易关系的发展及其问题

近40年来,日本与东盟一直互为重要的贸易伙伴。从上世纪80年代中期至今,双边贸易额剧增,进出口商品结构也发生了显著变化。日本在出口技术密集的高附加值产品的同时,从东盟进口的初级产品比重减少,制成品进口比重迅速增加。但这只是资本全球化、区域经济一体化形势下,部门内非熟练劳动与技术交换的垂直分工形式,并不能说是水平分工。东盟仍是日本重要的资源供应地、生产基地和工业品市场。     

International trade and economic growth: evidence from a panel ARDL-PMG approach

The purpose of this work is to study the impact of trade openness on the economic growth of the countries bordering the Mediterranean using a panel of eight countries from 1975 to 2016. We apply ARDL panel which is a technique recently developed. We study the effects of openness to international trade on economic growth while incorporating economic policy variables. The results show that the variables of commercial and financial openness favor economic growth. The free trade agreements that the European Union has signed with certain countries in the Mediterranean basin are designed above all to encourage greater regional economic integration and an increase in their potential growth. Therefore, our findings show that the financial sector is slow to affect economic growth in these countries. This study reveals that human capital and the investment rate support the economic growth of our sample. In addition, we conclude that a process of economic convergence has begun in these countries. A causal analysis was carried out we found an unidirectional causality ranging from economic growth to trade openness.

     

Financial Liberalization and Foreign Bank Entry on the Domestic Banking Performance in MENA Countries

Abstract: This study examines the impact of financial liberalization and foreign bank entry on the domestic banking sector from 1996 to 2007, and builds upon and expands the work of Lee (2002). We find that foreign bank entry, financial liberalization, ownership structure and degree of openness of foreign bank entry positively impact domestic banking system operating efficiency, capitalization, risk management, long‐term soundness, financial performance as well as economic and financial development. However, foreign bank entry is associated with reduced profit margins and increased operating costs of domestic banks in countries with less developed capital markets. Empirical evidence seems to support the argument that foreign bank presence leads to better allocation of capital and eliminates connected lending practices.     

Technology advantage,terms of trade,and pattern of trade

We develop a two-country, two-sector model of trade, and assume that the differences between two countries are not only the diversities of human capital distributions but also relative production technologies. We find that, in addition to the diversity effect, both the terms of trade effect and the relative technology effect can also matter for the pattern of trade. We prove that, unlike previous results, if combination of the terms of trade effect and the relative technology effect dominates the diversity effect, then a country with more diverse human capital will export goods produced by supermodular technology.     

Trade in services and returns on multinational activity

Conclusion This note has attempted to clarify both the theoretical and empirical reasons why the returns on the performance of a foreign subsidiary’s operations ought to be seen as returns on firm-specific knowledge (FSKs) which should be included in discussion of trade in services. This difficult task was not accomplished in a satisfactory manner by Ramstetter and Lee. It is entirely inappropriate to unbundle the activities of MNEs into returns on financial investment and a residual used to proxy payments for FSK. Rugman [1987] did not assume that the opportunity cost of financial capital is zero; rather that the “investment” activity of the MNE cannot be divorced from its FSK. The MNE uses internal markets as an integrated process to transfer FSK across national borders, raising theoretical and empirical issues for the international accounting of trade in services.