对中国贸易顺差是否虚高的认识——以中美贸易不平衡为例

从出口退税与贸易顺差的因果关系检验出发,我们可以得出出口退税可能引发非贸易资金流入的结论。从统计方法、转口贸易等角度并结合中美两国的数据进行检验,我们可以看到,中国贸易顺差确实存在虚高成分。中国贸易顺差的虚高将催生经济局部甚至全面过热,增加人民币升值压力,加剧境内金融市场流动性过剩,导致贸易争端升级。对此,应当引起我们的重视。     

International trade and competitiveness

We analyze the role of international market size differences in determining the investment in process R&D (and thus firms?? competitiveness) in a trade model with oligopolistic market structure, non-homothetic production technology and costly trade. We show that the R&D effort is higher (or even disproportionately so) for firms in the larger market, which causes endogenous asymmetries across countries. As a result, firms in the larger market have higher competitiveness, which increases their market shares in international markets. Furthermore, and contrary to what is predicted by Krugman (Am Econ Rev 70:950?C959, 1980) ??home market effect??, in equilibrium the larger country does not need to host a disproportionately higher share of the world??s industry than of the world??s demand. Despite this, the larger country can still continue to run a trade surplus in the oligopolistic sector, since it hosts firms with higher competitiveness than firms in the smaller country.     

Monopoly power,barriers to competition and the pattern of price differentials in international trade

Numerous studies have attempted to assess the influence of market structure on performance in domestic markets of industrial countries. With few exceptions, these investigations have shown that prices and profits are higher, and a less efficient allocation of resources prevails, in markets where agressive competition is absent. Using techniques similar to there applied in the industrial market studies, this analysis examines the pattern of iron steel prices in international trade. The findings parallel those for the industrial organization investigations. Typically, international markets which are more concentrated, or which rely on a smaller number of trade contacts, bear higher prices. Also, the magnitudes of these excess price margins are such as to have important policy implications since they constitute a serious drain on the foreign exchange reserves of some developing countries.     

The US Trade Deficit and the Rate of Interest

It is well known that nations with high trade deficits normally have higher interest rates than those with surplus or balanced trade. However, such has not been the case with the USA, which has seen a relentless trade deficit since 1982. Its interest rates have been lower than those prevailing in many trade‐surplus nations. Furthermore, these rates fell even as the trade shortfall shot up, generating an interest‐rate paradox. This paper demonstrates that, unlike for other nations, the rising trade deficit itself became the cause of lower US interest rates, and this happened because of the world's strong interest in maintaining a high value of the dollar.     

Trade Imbalance and Domestic Market Competition Policy

This study investigates the effect of a country's suppression of competition in its market for nontradables. It assumes that the initial equilibrium is stationary and demonstrates that if competition is suppressed in a small country, the country's trade surplus increases in the short run. In the large country case, the same change creates an excess demand for future tradables and affects the relative price between present and future tradables. Using a two‐country model, the study shows that this price change redistributes real wealth from the country with a trade deficit to the country with a trade surplus.     

我国贸易顺差存在的根源与发展趋势研究

近几年来,伴随着我国经济的快速发展,我国的贸易顺差不断增长,但到目前为止,对于我国贸易顺差存在的根源及发展趋势等问题还缺乏全面、深入的研究。文章基于两个实际经济变量模型对我国贸易收支出现顺差的原因进行了分析,认为国内有效需求不足和国内投资过度扩张、贸易品生产相对过剩与公共品供给不足以及国民储蓄超过国内投资是我国贸易收支出现顺差的直接原因,而人口红利、大规模的工业化与城市化、地方政府行为扭曲、金融抑制等因素决定了我国贸易顺差将在较长时期内存在。     

Finance and unemployment: new panel evidence

The effect of credit market imperfections on unemployment is largely investigated in the context of financial crises. This paper shifts the focus toward financial development and structure in a panel of advanced and developing countries. Some important findings emerge. Unemployment increases with financial development and concentration in banking markets but decreases with market orientation, the effect is stronger in magnitudes for young workers than female ones. More rigid market regulation increases unemployment. These findings are particularly pronounced for countries with higher income, better developed financial sectors, lower income inequality, greater trade openness, higher democracy, and common-law systems.     

外贸顺差、贸易筛选与就业关系研究——基于月度数据的再检验

本文利用2001-2009年的对外贸易月度数据,考察了中国出口与外贸顺差对就业水平的影响。研究表明,在暂时不考虑进口的情况下,出口规模的扩大对就业依然产生正向冲击;但是考虑进口后,外贸顺差的就业效应却呈现出先促进后抑制的效应。因此,传统的菲利普斯曲线机制认为的外贸顺差促进就业的观点可能需要重新修正,而Helpman等提出的"贸易筛选"机制在中国当前的外贸顺差规模下,将在劳动力市场上发挥主要作用。鉴于此,中国应在进一步提高出口规模和质量的同时,重视进口对经济发展的促进作用,将外贸顺差规模控制在合理范围。     

Trade liberalization,forward‐looking firms,and welfare

We set up an oligopolistic model with two exporting firms selling to a third market to investigate the welfare implications of trade liberalization when the exporting firms are forward‐looking. The results show that with cost asymmetry trade liberalization encourages the exporting firms to engage in tacit collusion, which may not only be detrimental to the domestic welfare, but also to the consumer surplus of the importing country. Moreover, we find that tacit collusion is less sustainable if the government of the importing country imposes a lower (higher) tariff on the more (less) efficient exporting firm. If a nonforward‐looking or a forward‐looking cost‐efficient domestic firm exists in the importing country, then trade liberalization also encourages tacit collusion.     

内需扩大、消费习惯与贸易顺差

通过在消费习惯的基础上,建立最优消费的跨时贸易理论模型,然后运用GMM、2S-2SLS对中国在1978-2009年间的消费习惯和对外贸易进行实证分析,结论表明:消费者的消费习惯在国际贸易中起重要的作用,习惯降低了持久性收入对跨时贸易的影响,延长了对外贸易顺差持续时间。消费习惯的影响,东部最低、中部次之,西部最大。消费习惯在降低净产出与贸易顺差负相关关系的同时,又扩大了前期贸易余额与贸易顺差的正相关关系。影响贸易顺差的因素很多,在不考虑其它因素影响下,消费习惯也是中国贸易顺差快速增加的重要原因。     

包含劳动力市场条件的劳资关系模型及实证分析

本文构建了包括城市失业人口和农村剩余劳动力的全社会角度的失业率指标,以工资和劳动生产率作为劳资之间经济利益关系的考察变量,运用自回归分布滞后模型,实证分析了我国特定劳动力市.场条件下的第二产业和建筑业工资与劳动生产率之间的关系.发现工资增长促进劳动生产率提高的效应,在建筑业存在比第二产业更显著的揭示了通过提高工资改善劳资关系的经济意义.     

Labor market distortions and China's WTO accession package:: an applied general equilibrium assessment

The economic implications of China's accession to the World Trade Organization have been analyzed using applied general equilibrium techniques. We explore the consequences of trade reform in the presence of labor market distortions. A formal model of imperfect labor mobility is incorporated into a large-scale, stochastic applied general equilibrium framework with which the consequences of China's trade reform for net welfare are considered. The simulations suggest that distortions in China's labor market, including imperfect labor mobility, rural-urban migration, dual urban markets and surplus rural labor, have significant effects on trade liberalization outcomes and in some cases produce unexpected second-best results. Journal of Comparative Economics 31 (4) (2003) 774–794.     

从资源禀赋角度看我国贸易顺差

高额贸易顺差的连续出现,给经济政策的制定带来了诸多难题。本文分析了我国当前贸易顺差的结构特点,借助资源禀赋与贸易顺差的相关理论,剖析了顺差形成的内在原因。本文认为,相对较低的资源价格是形成我国贸易顺差的主要原因。积极推动金融体制改革,完善要素市场是解决顺差的重要途径。     

Banking on the FED: QE1-2-3 and the Rebalancing of the Global Economy

Growing income inequality in most countries in the 1990s and 2000s led to a global shortfall between supply and demand. The US economy bridged this shortfall domestically and globally by blowing successive equity market and housing bubbles, but these produced ever more severe financial crises. Rebalancing after the 2008 crisis required trade surplus countries to expand their non-traded sectors, but rebalancing is never immaculate. Instead, the Federal Reserve Bank's three rounds of Large-Scale Asset Purchases, or quantitative easing, shifted investment flows towards some developed and developing economies. As a matter of accounting, capital inflows led to shrinking trade surpluses in those countries. However, their relatively undeveloped securities markets mean that rebalancing largely occurred through rising housing prices, mirroring the same unsustainable phenomenon the USA experienced in the 2000s. In effect, the USA shifted part of its unsustainably large non-traded sector back to trade surplus countries by causing the real-estate part of the non-traded sector in surplus countries to expand. However, this is not a sustainable solution to global trade and financial imbalances in the long run, and risks producing the same kind of crises the USA experienced in 2008.     

Information, bilateral negotiations, and worker recruitment

This paper studies experimentally how firms choose between using a centralized market and bilateral negotiations to recruit new personnel. In the market firms interact with several workers but do not have information about workers’ behavior in the past. In the bilateral negotiations firms negotiate bilaterally with prospective workers and learn about workers’ performance in previous jobs. We show that the interaction between social preferences, the incompleteness of contracts and the existence of information about a worker’s past performance provides an explanation for firms forgoing market opportunities and bilaterally negotiating with a worker. We observe that approximately 30% of all job contracts were bilaterally negotiated when these contracts are incomplete as opposed to only 10% when contracts were complete. The surplus from trade is higher when incomplete contracts can be bilaterally negotiated, which can be attributed to the presence of information.     

国际竞争力、海上贸易与套汇:明朝中后期白银流入的考察

明代中后期至19世纪,中国保持巨额贸易顺差达两个半世纪之久,这在世界贸易史上实属罕见。巨量白银流入有两个原因:贸易顺差和套汇。本文考察了这两个因素形成的机制。与晚明时期类似,当前我国也出现了持续的巨量贸易顺差,究其原因是政府对贸易的干预政策所致。本文认为,不能简单地评判贸易顺差的优劣,关键是贸易顺差与经济发展水平、经济结构等因素是否相适应。     

Vertical Price Control and Parallel Imports: Theory and Evidence

The paper analyzes parallel imports, or goods traded without the authorization of a trademark owner. Parallel imports have multiple causes, including vertical price control, which the authors model. A manufacturer selling its product through an independent agent sets the wholesale price sufficiently low to induce a desired retail price abroad. This permits the agent to sell the product profitably in the originating market. Combined social surplus decreases and then increases in the cost of parallel trade. Restricting parallel imports benefits the manufacturer, but could raise or reduce global surplus. The econometric analysis indicates that the vertical‐control explanation of parallel imports is important.     

China's Exchange Rate and International Adjustment in Wages, Prices and Interest Rates: Japan Deja Vu?

China's fixed its exchange rate at 8.28 yuan to the dollar from1994 to July 2005, and has only allowed for a small appreciationsince then. China's productivity growth has been very high relativeto most other countries: its trade surplus has been rising andit continues to accumulate large dollar exchange reserves. Manyobservers, including high officials in the US government, takethis as per se evidence that the renminbi is undervalued. Tobalance China's international competitiveness and reduce itstrade surplus, they want the renminbi to appreciate much more.This common presumption of renminbi undervaluation is wrong,and its appreciation need not reduce China's trade surplus butwould cause serious deflation in China. To show this, we considerinternational adjustment between China and the US from bothan asset market and a labor market perspective, and comparethis to Japan's unsuccessful appreciation of the yen from 1971to 1995. During a time of economic catch-up and rapid financialtransformation, fixing the exchange rate is the preferred wayof anchoring the domestic price level. (JEL codes: F15, F31,F33)     

Staple food control and industrial development in postwar Japan, 1950–1957: The role of the black market

Japanese rice policy in the early postwar period consisted of a compulsory delivery and rationing system designed to transfer economic surplus from farmers to urban workers to relieve upward pressure on industrial wage rates. The system was not consistent with private incentives so a black market in rice about half the size of the official market existed. This paper uses simple welfare analysis to estimate the magnitudes of the transfers and social costs involved for 1950–1957. The analysis suggests that the black market played an important role in the success of the rice policy during this period and provides a rationale for the apparent willingness of Japanese authorities to allow the black market to function alongside the official market.     

Inside and outside fiat money, gains to trade, and IS-LM

Summary. We build a one-period general equilibrium model with money. Equilibrium exists, and fiat money has positive value, as long as the ratio of outside money to inside money is less than the gains to trade available at autarky. We show that the nominal effects of government fiscal and monetary policy can be completely described by a diagram identical in form to the IS-LM curves introduced by Hicks to describe Keynes' general theory. IS-LM analysis is thus not incompatible with full market clearing, multiple commodities, and heterogeneous households. We show that as the government deficit approaches a finite threshold, hyperinflation sets in (prices converge to infinity and real trade collapses). At the other extreme, if the government surplus is too large, the economy enters a liquidity trap in which nominal GNP sinks and monetary policy is ineffectual. Received: January 2, 2002; revised version: April 8, 2002 Correspondence to: P. Dubey