The Impact of Trade Openness on Regional Inequality: The Cases of India and Brazil

Regional inequalities are large in India and Brazil and represent a development challenge. This article aims to determine whether regional inequalities are linked to a country's trade openness. An annual indicator of regional inequalities is constructed for India for the period 1980–2004 and for Brazil from 1985–2004. Results from time series regressions show that Brazil's trade openness contributes to a reduction in regional inequalities. The opposite result is found for India. India's trade openness is an important factor aggravating income inequality among Indian states. In both countries, inflows of foreign direct investment are found to increase regional inequalities.     

Overlapping free trade agreements and international trade: A network approach

In our work, we have analysed the effect of the hub‐and‐spoke nature of free trade agreements (FTA s) on trade. Contrary to previous analyses, we have considered the effects of the country's position in the FTA network on the bilateral trade of the hub country. We have conducted an in‐depth analysis of the global network of FTA s, focusing particularly on its evolution in the last 15 years. We have utilised a panel data set covering the period 1960–2010 to investigate the effects of the hub‐and‐spoke on trade. Our results show that the countries that are more connected to FTA s export more than those that are less involved, although not all the partner countries you can connect with are the same. An increase in the number of spokes that have no link between them has, on average, a negative effect on the trade of the hub, which indicates that signing FTA s with every country is not the optimal strategy for increasing trade. However, if we consider the way new FTA s change the relative position of a country, we can see that if new FTA s make the country more central or less constrained in the network, these new agreements have a strongly positive and significant pro‐trade effect.     

Host market characteristics,FDI, and the FDI – trade relationship

This paper empirically examines how a host nation's market characteristics, particularly its market maturity and role as an export platform, affect the amount of inward FDI it receives and its FDI?–?bilateral trade relationship with the FDI source. For the period 1989?–?1999, using Japanese outward FDI into 85 geographically and developmentally diverse countries, we find a positive and significant relationship between FDI inflows and the host's market maturity levels. However, the FDI?–?trade interaction between the host and the FDI source appears to vary inversely with the host country's market maturity level. In addition, after controlling for the host's market maturity, we find that the nature of the host's ‘export platform’ status also significantly impacts both inward FDI flows and the FDI?–?trade relationship.     

A New Measure of Trade Openness

Trade openness, popularly measured as (X + M)/GDP in the hundreds of studies published to date, consistently considers the world's biggest trading countries such as the USA, the UK, Japan and Germany to be closed economies, irrespective of the data set used. This study suggests a composite trade share measure that more completely reflects reality by combining two important dimensions of trade openness: trade share and the relative importance of a country's trade level to total world trade. Robustness tests support the new proposed measure in lieu of the conventional measure of openness and suggest that the latter may not only be incomplete but may also overstate the impact of trade on such things as income and the environment.     

Trade openness,income levels,and economic growth: The case of developing countries, 1970–2009

This paper attempts to investigate the extent to which trade openness has had an impact on the levels of income and rates of growth in a sample of 115 developing countries for the period 1970–2009. Additionally, to assess whether there is an income level threshold for a country to benefit from international trade, the sample is broken down into three mutually exclusive groups of countries: low-income, lower middle-income, and upper middle-income countries. The main novelty of the paper lies on the use, on the one hand, of a new and better trade openness measure and, on the other hand, of non-stationary heterogeneous panel cointegration techniques to cope with the problem of cross-sectional dependence. The results show a positive bi-directional relationship between trade openness and income level in the long run, thus suggesting that trade openness is both a cause and a consequence of the level of income. The results for the short run, that is, the link between openness growth and economic growth, go in the same direction.     

Free trade agreements in a small,open country: The case of Norway

Negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs) has been a high political priority for Norway. Today, it has agreements with 41 countries outside the European Union (EU)/the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), resulting in one of the world's most extensive FTA networks. FTAs cover about 10% of Norway's trade—a share likely to increase in the future. These agreements eliminate tariffs on a substantial number of traded products and have gradually become more comprehensive, covering an expanding range of non‐tariff areas. Hence, they may have trade‐promoting effects beyond tariff reductions as such. On the other hand, the non‐tariff provisions often do not go further than what has already been dealt with in other international agreements or practised domestically, so their overall effect may be limited.     

门槛效应、制造业地区集聚与全要素生产率增长——基于贸易开放的视角

本文采用门槛模型回归方法,利用中国27个省市1985-2007年的地区制造业数据,在贸易开放的视角下对集聚与全要素生产率增长之间的门槛效应进行了检验,结果发现集聚对全要素生产率增长的促进作用随贸易开放程度的加深逐步增大,存在门槛效应。在开放条件下,集聚主要通过推动技术进步对全要素生产率增长产生影响,而集聚对技术效率的影响却为负,则在一定程度上说明了中国制造业地区集聚的负外部性以及重复投资等问题。     

FOREIGN TRADE AND THE EXCHANGE RATE IN BOTSWANA

Botswana is a success story of exceptional economic performance, sound development management, and good governance. A great deal of that success can be attributed to the country's export performance and the avoidance of the 'Dutch Disease' syndrome that has plagued other natural resource based African countries. This article documents and analyzes Botswana's trade and exchange rate relationship, during the past two decades, in the context of the country's economic performance, and examines the related issue of the value of the country's currency to determine whether it is overvalued or undervalued.     

贸易开放度与经济增长研究进展述评

文章以贸易开放度度量指标的构建方式将贸易开放度的度量方法分为指标体系法和模型构建法进行阐述,并对每类方法存在的问题进行了评论;尽管贸易开放度与经济增长的关系在理论上有较为一致的观点.但是在实证研究方面却出现了不一致的结论,文章就实证研究结论不一致的原因进行了分析与评论.     

Does Globalisation Affect Crime? Theory and Evidence

Globalisation sceptics argue that trade liberalisation has high social costs, including an increase in expropriative behaviour such as civil conflict, coercion of labour and crime. We show that a theoretical relationship between trade and expropriation exists, but the sign differs for developed and developing economies. We verify this empirically using data on crime rates. Specifically, we find that trade liberalisation, as measured by both higher openness and lower import duty rates, tends to increase burglaries and theft in very labour‐abundant countries. For other countries, however, we find that trade liberalisation has either a small negative effect on crime or no effect, depending on the country's capital abundance.     

The Most and the Least Favoured Nations: Norway's Trade Policy in Perspective

This article reviews some recent developments in Norway's trade policy, in the light of the WTO's Trade Policy Review of Norway, 2004. A main focus is on the relationship between MFN trade policy and Norway's numerous preferential trade arrangements. In spite of a growing number of free trade agreements the paper suggests that Norway's trade regime has not become more discriminatory. The reason is that cuts in MFN tariffs as well as improvements in GSP have eroded preference margins in manufacturing faster than the coverage of free trade agreements has expanded. As a result of liberalisation, the trade regime for manufacturing has become less discriminatory, not more. While Norway is on the whole a liberal‐minded supporter of the world trade system, it has twice in recent history reacted with protectionism. Around 1980, a restrictive quota regime for clothing was implemented. This has later been dismantled, contributing to sharply increased imports from developing countries. For agriculture, Norway has currently high protection, and tariff preferences are limited. It is likely that agricultural protection will be gradually reduced due to the WTO, as well as through free trade agreements and improvements in GSP.     

Assessing the Impacts of US‐Japan Bilateral Trade Agreements, 1980–1995

The paper presents three different viewpoints on the effects of US‐Japan bilateral trade agreements and finds some evidence to support each one using trade data from 1980–1995. For most of the 25 industry‐agreement cases, the data do not support a conclusion of significant positive impacts of the agreements on Japan's imports of targeted manufactured products from either the US or non‐US sources. In at least one high‐profile case involving autos, I find evidence suggesting positive impacts on imports from the US, but in this case the data suggests trade diversion benefiting US0based producers at the expense of European ones. I also find a few cases where the agreements may have produced positive effects on Japan's imports from non‐US sources.     

Does Trade Openness Promote Multilateral Environmental Cooperation?

This article puts forward a number of arguments why trade openness might promote multilateral environmental cooperation. Most of these arguments are grounded in the substantive self‐interest of the trading country. It tests the proposition using a range of proxy variables for general trade openness as well as specific export interests. The article examines whether countries open to trade are more likely to have signed three recent multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) and are more likely to have ratified early on another three agreements with quasi‐universal membership. After controlling for income, political freedom and population size, the empirical estimations find some weak evidence in favour of a possible synergy between trade openness and multilateral environmental cooperation. World Trade Organisation membership as well as general export openness go hand in hand with greater willingness to participate in multilateral environmental cooperation in some cases. However, whether specific trade interests promote or hinder multilateral environmental cooperation depends on whether the relevant agreement is likely to threaten or accommodate the interests of exporting countries.     

On the Irrelevance of Mercosur: Evidence From Foreign Direct Investment

ABSTRACT

This article utilizes data from more than 100 countries over 30 years to identify the key factors that make a country more attractive to foreign direct investment (FDI). We find evidence that a country's potential marginal returns to capital, available infrastructure, degree of trade openness, labor force qualification, and macroeconomic stability have a positive impact on FDI inflows. Our estimates capture a change in the role played by trade protection and an increase in the importance of human capital as globalization progressed. An application of our models illustrates why Mercosur countries have underperformed their peers in attracting FDI.     

The effects of bilateral attitudes on imports

Research based on the gravity model has shown that non-economic factors affect international trade, and recent studies have shown that people's perception affects economic exchange. In this study, we explore the effects of attitudes on bilateral trade. Using survey data from the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Projects for 68 countries from 2002 to 2015, we find that a more favourable attitude of a country towards another country will increase the former country's imports from the latter. The result is robust to an endogeneity check, to different measures of attitudes and to different estimation methods. However, heterogeneity is observed across different types of goods and countries. The result holds for trade in intermediate and consumer goods, but the effects are not statistically significant for capital goods. The effects are statistically significant for bilateral trade between different country groups, except for high-income countries' imports from non-high-income countries.     

Cross-border production sharing and exchange-rate sensitivity of Mexico's trade balance

Increasing patterns of international trade occur in the form of cross-border production sharing – the dispersion of separate blocks of an integrated production process across different nations. In the case of ‘standard’ or ‘ordinary’ trade, imports are destined for use in the importing country, and exports are largely produced within the country. However, with production sharing, imported parts and components are destined for inclusion in the country's exports. A depreciation of a nation's currency raises its exports. At the same time, imported components become more expensive, which partly offsets the expansionary effect of the depreciation on exports. Using a simple theoretical framework, this paper shows that production networks lower the sensitivity of a country's trade balance to changes in exchange rates. The empirical examination finds Mexico's Maquiladora trade balance to be unresponsive to changes in both, its real effective as well as its real peso-dollar rates, while that for non-Maquiladora category is significantly responsive, in confirmation with the theorized hypothesis.     

Tariffs and formation of free trade agreements networks

This paper examines the formation of bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) on the basis of country heterogeneity in the tariff level. We demonstrate that a country's unilateral incentive to form an FTA depends on the relative magnitudes of the (negative) market concession effect and the (positive) market expansion effect, both of which are determined by the tariff levels of the two FTA partner countries. Global welfare is maximised when all country pairs form FTAs. Two countries in equilibrium are more likely to form an FTA when their tariff gap is smaller or when their tariff levels are neither very high nor very low. This finding is robust to several extensions of the model. Our preliminary empirical analysis provides some evidence for the finding.     

中国服务贸易开放度研究

入世前中国在入世议定书中对服务贸易的开放作出了相关承诺。如今中国入世已近10年,服务贸易对外开放的进展情况如何?本文就这个问题采用修正过的对外贸易比率法进行了实证研究,并用同样的方法研究了美国的服务贸易开放度,然后对中美服务贸易开放度进行了比较。研究结果表明,中国服务贸易处于一个相对较高的水平,服务贸易开放的现状与我国入世承诺基本一致。     

贸易开放、人力资本与中国能源消耗

文章从贸易开放对中国能源消耗产生的影响这一基本问题出发,将人力资本纳入分析视角,研究了贸易开放、人力资本对中国能源消耗的直接效应和交互效应。利用中国2001-2012年30个省份的统计数据,运用固定效应回归模型和面板门槛回归模型进行了实证研究,结果表明：贸易开放对能源消耗的直接效应呈倒“U”型曲线关系,即在贸易开放水平较低时,提高贸易开放水平将增加能源消耗量并提高能源消耗强度;当贸易开放水平较高时,提高贸易开放水平反而能促使能源消耗量和能源消耗强度降低。人力资本对能源消耗的直接效应显著为负,提高人力资本要素积累将促进地区经济增长从物质资本驱动型向人力资本驱动型转变。贸易开放与人力资本对能源消耗的交互效应在人力资本处于较高的门槛区间时显著为负,说明贸易开放在人力资本较高的地区将促进该地区专业化生产节能降耗的人力资本密集型产品,从而降低地区能源消耗量并提高能源利用效率。     

中国经济开放度与经济增长关系的实证分析

改革开放以来,中国对外贸易迅速发展,吸收FDI以及对外直接投资规模不断扩大,国民经济长期保持高速增长。通过贸易开放度和投资开放度两个指标测算中国的经济开放度,并在此基础上运用VAR模型和冲击反应模型对中国经济开放度与经济增长之间的关系进行经验检验。结果表明,贸易开放度和投资开放度对中国经济增长的作用存在较大的差异。进一步的动态研究发现,在不同的发展阶段,经济开放度对中国经济增长的冲击作用也存在较大的差异。