The nature of trade,global production fragmentation and inflationary dynamics: Cross-country evidence

This study investigates under which circumstances trade has impact on inflation dynamics by examining the independent effects of trade intensity, intra-industry trade and trade on value added. Trade in goods is decomposed into consumption (final) goods and intermediate inputs to deepen the assessment of the role of the globalisation of production activities on inflation dynamics. Open-economy new Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) analyses suggest that inflation is sensitive to domestic factors and that the relevance of external factors changes with respect to the nature of trade, country groups and time. Vertical intra-industry trade in intermediate inputs and value-added trade play important role, whereas final goods trade has no statistically significant effect on inflation dynamics.     

Tariff wars in the Ricardian Model with a continuum of goods

This paper describes strategic tariff choices within the Ricardian framework of Dornbusch, Fischer, and Samuelson (1977) using CES preferences. The optimum tariff schedule is uniform across goods and inversely related to the import demand elasticity of the other country. In the Nash equilibrium of tariffs, larger economies apply higher tariff rates. Productivity adjusted relative size (≈ GDP ratio) is a sufficient statistic for absolute productivity advantage and the size of the labor force. Both countries apply higher tariff rates if specialization gains from comparative advantage are high and transportation cost is low. A sufficiently large economy prefers the inefficient Nash equilibrium in tariffs over free trade due to its quasi-monopolistic power on world markets. The required threshold size is increasing in comparative advantage and decreasing in transportation cost. I discuss the implications of the static Nash-equilibrium analysis for the sustainability and structure of trade agreements.     

Welfare implications of trade liberalization and fiscal reform: A quantitative experiment

This paper studies the welfare implications of revenue-neutral trade liberalization and fiscal reform programs for developing economies using a multi-sector dynamic general equilibrium model of a small open economy. We analyze how different combinations of tariffs – on imported consumption goods, intermediate inputs, and capital goods – and taxes – on consumption, labor income and capital income – affect the transitional and long-run welfare. We report three main findings. First, trade liberalization programs financed by consumption and labor income taxes tend to result in substantial welfare gains, but financing the lost tariff revenue through capital income taxes can have an adverse impact on welfare. Second, a significant fraction of welfare changes is due to transitional effects stemming from the allocation of resources in response to changes in tariffs and taxes. Third, trade liberalization and fiscal reform programs often translate into much larger welfare gains in countries that are more open to international financial markets.     

Information, incentives and multinational firms

I present a model that explains a multinational firm's choice of organizational form. If a firm in the developed country outsources the production of its intermediate goods to a supplier in the developing country, it faces an adverse selection problem. If it chooses to produce the intermediate goods in its own subsidiary in the developing country, it faces an inefficient monitoring problem. My analysis of this tradeoff provides a new explanation for the observation that FDI is concentrated in capital intensive industries and yields two empirical hypotheses: more firms should adopt outsourcing instead of FDI after trade liberalization; the share of intra-firm trade in total trade should be increasing in the degree of productivity dispersion across intermediate goods suppliers in the developing country.     

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.     

Trade and the (dis)incentive to reform labor markets: The case of reform in the European Union

We study the relation between international trade and the gains to reform labor markets by removing firing restrictions. We find that trade linkages imply substantially smaller benefits to reform than those calculated in the closed economy general equilibrium model of Hopenhayn and Rogerson [Hopenhayn, Hugo, Rogerson, Richard, 1993. Job Turnover and policy evaluations: a general equilibrium analysis. Journal of Political Economy 101 (5), 915–938 October]. When economies trade, labor market policies in one country spill over to other countries through their effect on the terms of trade. A key finding in the open economy is that the share of the welfare gains from domestic labor market reform exported substantially exceeds the share of goods exported. Thus, with international trade, a country retains little to no benefit from unilaterally reforming its labor market. A coordinated elimination of firing taxes yields considerable benefits. We also find that the U.K. benefits from labor market reform by its continental trading partners. These insights provide some explanation for recent efforts toward labor market reform in the European Union.     

Weak links in the chain of comparative advantage

This paper examines the proposition that trade in many commodities can be explained by a chain of comparative advantage. It is first shown, in a two-country, two-factor model, that trade accords with the ranking of goods by factor intensity if there are unequal factor prices, free trade, and only final goods. This result continues to hold if either trade impediments or intermediate products are introduced. However, if both are present, the chain proposition breaks down. Finally, with many countries, it is shown that trade impediments alone can invalidate the chain proposition.     

垂直专业化分工及我国的分工地位

垂直专业化分工是国际分工的深化,是同一产业或行业内同一产品的不同生产阶段之间的国际分工。基于比较优势的垂直专业化分工,其表现形式是包含中间产品的产业内贸易,其分工和贸易模式是可预测的。我国在全球垂直专业化分工中的地位是进口半制成品并加工装配成消费品,然后出口,其主要形式是加工贸易。     

The Performance of Trading Firms in the Services Sectors – Comparable Evidence from Four EU Countries

We examine trade complexity and the implications of adding additional dimensions of trade for firm performance among services producers. We use unique firm‐level data to compare these patterns across four EU countries. Overall, services firms are relatively less engaged in trade than manufacturing firms; they mostly trade goods and are more likely to import than to export. Trade in services is quite rare; services are more likely to be traded by firms already trading goods. Trading firms in the services sectors are significantly larger, more productive and pay higher wages than non‐traders. Two‐way traders outperform one‐way traders. Changes in trading status by either adding another dimension of trade (imports, exports) or another type of product (goods, services) are infrequent and are associated with significant preswitching premia. In contrast, learning effects from switching trading status are uncommon. This points to significant fixed cost of being engaged in trade and confirms some previous findings that trading services firms have similar traits as their manufacturing counterparts. Apart from greater trade participation in smaller countries, we do not observe systematic differences in terms of trade or switching premia between the four countries that might be attributable to differences in country characteristics.     

中日两国产业内贸易的实证研究

本文对中日双边贸易中制成品产业内贸易的发展现状、特征以及影响因素进行了实证研究,发现随着中日双边贸易中资本和技术密集型产品比重的提高,制成品产业内贸易比重也有所提高;其中,机械和运输设备产业内贸易所占比重最高;垂直差异化产品产业内贸易是中日制成品产业内贸易的主要形式;日本对华直接投资活动活跃、跨国公司国际一体化生产体系的构筑及其产业内投资的发展、中国持续经济增长引起的市场容量扩大、加工贸易的快速发展、产品差异化发展以及便利的地理区位因素均有利于促进双边产业内贸易的发展,规模经济和贸易壁垒因素对其则尚存消极影响。     

Openness and optimal monetary policy

We show that the composition of international trade has important implications for the optimal volatility of the exchange rate, above and beyond the size of trade flows. Using an analytically tractable small open economy model, we characterize the impact of the trade composition on the policy trade-off and on the role played by the exchange rate in correcting for price misalignments. Contrary to models where openness can be summarized by the degree of home bias, we find that openness can be a poor proxy of the welfare impact of alternative monetary policies. Using input–output data for 25 countries we document substantial differences in the import and non-tradable content of final demand components, and in the role played by imported inputs in domestic production. The estimates are used in a richer small-open-economy DSGE model to quantify the loss from an exchange rate peg relative to the Ramsey policy conditional on the composition of imports. We find that the main determinant of the losses is the share of non-traded goods in final demand.     

Interacting factor endowments and trade costs: A multi-country,multi-good approach to trade theory

We provide a synthetic analysis of the different ways in which countries participate in the world economy. Classic trade questions are reconsidered by generalizing a factor-proportions model to multiple countries, multiple goods or multi-stage production, and country-specific trade costs. Each country's production specialization, trade and welfare is determined by the interaction between its relative endowment and its trade costs. We consider the effects of allowing one good to ‘fragment’ into component and assembly production. The volume of trade and welfare levels are higher with fragmentation for most countries, although for many countries these variables fall with fragmentation.     

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.     

STOLPER–SAMUELSON REVISITED: TRADE AND DISTRIBUTION WITH OLIGOPOLISTIC PROFITS

This paper investigates the distributional impact of international trade when goods markets are oligopolistic and firms partially pass‐through changes in tariffs into prices and factor costs for differentiated products. Trade liberalization raises mark‐ups and profit shares in the export industry and lowers them in the import‐competing industry, while Stolper–Samuelson effects on real prices of primary factors are attenuated or possibly reversed. An extended model shows how ‘offshoring’ (trade in intermediate goods) can potentially increase mark‐ups for oligopolistic producers of final goods. The analysis illuminates why business interests generally support trade liberalization policies today, regardless of their countries' factor abundance.     

Trade Liberalization and the Wage Skill Premium: Evidence from Indonesia

In this paper, we analyze the effect of reducing import tariffs on intermediate inputs and final goods on the wage skill premium within firms in Indonesia – a country with a high share of unskilled workers. We present a new finding that reducing input tariffs reduces the wage skill premium within firms that import their intermediate inputs. However, we do not find significant effects from reducing tariffs on final goods on the wage skill premium within firms.     

An Extension of the Structural Change Model to International Economic Relations

In this paper Pasinetti's model of structural economic dynamics (1981) is extended to consider international economic relations. Conditions for full employment, full expenditure of income and equilibrium of the trade balance are established for an open economy that requires capital goods to produce final commodities. Analytical results concerning the benefits from free trade and international learning are formally studied. In addition, static and dynamic aspects of the ‘principle of comparative cost advantage’ are analysed considering the determinants of the specialization level.     

On necessarily welfare-enhancing free trade areas

The well-known Kemp-Vanek-Ohyama-Wan proposition establishes that if two or more countries form a customs union (CU) by freezing their net external trade vector through a common external tariff and eliminating internal trade barriers, the union as a whole and the rest of the world cannot be worse off than before. Owing to the fact that a Free Trade Area (whose member countries impose country specific external tariff vectors) does not equalize marginal rates of substitution across its member countries (in contrast to a CU), the literature has been unable to provide a parallel demonstration regarding welfare improving Free Trade Areas (FTAs). The present paper eliminates this gap. In extending the result to the case with intermediate inputs, the paper also sheds new light on the rules of origin required to support such necessarily welfare enhancing FTAs. We show here that provided no trade deflection is permitted, all that is required by way of rules of origin is that the goods produced within the union - whether final or intermediate - be allowed to be traded freely. The proportion of domestic value added in final goods does not enter as a criterion in the rules of origin.     

中国与发达国家生产者服务业产业内贸易比较研究——基于货物贸易、服务贸易的视角分析

随着国际贸易的纵深发展,当今社会贸易种类已由传统的货物贸易向现代服务贸易转变,生产者服务业作为服务贸易中最核心、附加价值最高的组成部分在后工业经济时代发挥着越来越重要的作用。本文采用中国与有代表性的发达国家美、日、德、法、意经济体间生产者服务部门产业内贸易比较测度,揭示出当今中国在急需产业转型、效益提升的关键时期与发达国家间生产者服务业产业内贸易的现状与问题。同时,文中应用我国与发达国家间生产者服务业产业内贸易受约因素的面板数据分析,发现2000-2005年间,中美、中德、中意专利产业内贸易不存在,仅有产业间贸易,说明我国与发达国家间专利技术方面的差距所在。基于文中的研究提出我国要大力提升专利业发展、继续巩固货物贸易比较优势,提高科研、提升人力资本和加强环保,这将对我国与发达国家间生产者服务业产业内贸易增长发挥促进作用。     

Optimal integration strategies for the multinational firm

We examine integration strategies of multinational firms that face a rich array of choices of international organization. Each firm must provide headquarter services from its home country, but can produce its intermediate inputs and conduct assembly operations in one or more of three locations. We study the equilibrium choices of firms that differ in productivity levels, focusing on the role that industry characteristics such as the fixed costs of foreign subsidiaries, the cost of transporting intermediate and final goods, and the regional composition of the consumer market play in determining the optimal integration strategies.     

On the choice of in-house production versus outsourcing by multinationals

Abstract

The global economy is becoming more integrated with the increase in international fragmentation. This paper examines two forms of global production networks in a general equilibrium framework by building on the ‘knowledge-capital model.’ The focus is the relationship between country characteristics and the multinational firm's choice either to allocate the labor-intensive processing stage in-house to its foreign affiliates or to outsource the activity to outside contractors at arm's-length. Chinese data on the export processing trade are used to test the theory. The findings show that multinational firms with their headquarters in highly skilled-labor-abundant countries of intermediate size have a preference for outsourcing. By contrast, skilled-labor-abundant countries of small size are homes to multinational firms with subsidiary production in the host country where unskilled labor is cheap.