IS THERE A CURSE OF RELOCATION? ANALYSING THE CAUSAL LINK BETWEEN OFFSHORING AND THE INNOVATION PERFORMANCE OF (SMALL) FIRMS

We analyse the empirical link between offshoring activities and different dimensions of innovation performance at the firm‐level. In order to identify causal effects running from offshoring to innovation, we use a quasi‐experimental comparison group approach by means of (conditional) difference‐in‐difference estimations applied to German establishment‐level data for firms that conducted offshoring activities in the period 2007–13. We find that the international relocation of business functions has a negative impact on the firms’ propensity to be innovative in terms of product and process innovations as well as product improvements. While for larger firms the reduction in process innovations is most striking, potentially due to a lack of resources, stagnation in expertise and a reduction in intra‐organizational learning‐by‐doing associated with the relocation of some business activities, for small and medium‐sized enterprises we particularly observe a reduction in product innovations after the offshoring activity has taken place. When interpreting this ‘pessimistic’ picture on the link between offshoring and the innovation performance of firms, the reader should note that our findings for German establishments have to be assessed through the lens of a global economy in economic recession after 2008, which may have intensified the negative impact of offshoring on the firms’ innovation performance.     

“互联网+”下开放式创新平台建设实践

面对互联网络和信息技术进步等创新环境变化,研究有利于中小企业开放式创新的条件尤为必要。首先从理论基础和现实基础出发,指出小企业进行开放式创新的可能性和面临的新机遇,并通过深层次归纳和挖掘中小企业参与开放式创新的案例,破解中小企业开放式创新瓶颈。不同类型企业可分别依托中小企业、咨询公司、龙头企业搭建开放式创新平台,并充分利用大型企业资源,依托专业管理运营团队,注重知识产权及隐私保护、专业品牌宣传与推广,完善奖励体系,构建开放式创新平台基本模型。通过搭建开放式创新平台,帮助中小企业以更低的成本获得创新资源,促使其参与或者主导更大规模的创新活动。     

Multinational Production, Absorptive Capacity, and Endogenous R&D Spillovers

Do R&D spillovers have an impact on whether firms choose to go multinational or not? We present a three‐stage Cournot duopoly model, which identifies under what conditions firms choose to service a foreign market through exports or localized production. The establishment of a foreign subsidiary improves the ability to learn from foreign R&D since spillovers are strongly moderated by geographical distance. We explicitly model the concept of absorptive capacity, where gains from spillovers are determined by own R&D investments. With exogenous R&D investments, the absorptive capacity effect contributes to increase the gains from going multinational when the firm is R&D‐intensive. However, if R&D investments are endogenous, only medium‐sized absorptive capacity effects will result in firms going multinational. Furthermore, higher spillover rates do not necessarily drive down R&D and profits for the multinational firm. This stands in contrast to models that ignore absorptive capacity effects.     

The impact of trade promotion services on Canadian exporter performance

From 1999 to 2006, Canadian firms successfully diversified their exports to destinations beyond the United States while smaller firms increased their share in total exports. Both are explicit aims of the Trade Commissioner Service export promotion program. Exploiting assumptions from the treatment effects literature, we identify a causal, export‐boosting effect. In contrast with existing evidence for Latin American countries, the intensive margin effect—higher exports to existing product‐destination markets—dominates. Effects at the extensive margin—exporting more products to more destinations—are smaller and sensitive to identification assumptions. We interpret this evidence in light of trade models with heterogeneous firms.     

Impact of nontariff measures on firms in Tunisia

This paper analyzes the effect of nontariff measures (NTMs) on firms in Tunisia. It draws a precise picture of NTMs’ effects on firms’ imports. We use firm‐level data to take into account firm heterogeneity. We explore the impact of NTMs on small vs. medium and large firms. We also consider the differentiated impact of NTMs. Some measures have informational content and help reduce information asymmetries. When the endogeneity issue of NTMs is controlled for, results show an overall positive impact of NTMs on imports. They provide evidence that NTMs are more beneficial to the imports of medium and large firms. Moreover, NTMs with informational content have an import enhancing effect. An extended analysis separating importing and exporting firms from those solely importing suggests that both types of firms benefit from the positive effects of NTMs. This result highlights the need to assist small firms facing NTMs. Furthermore, some NTMs with informational content should be addressed carefully and not considered only as barriers to trade to be eliminated. Instead, harmonization efforts between countries can be a better policy.     

Spatial Discrimination,Nations’ Size and Transportation Costs

In this paper we develop a spatial Cournot trade model with two unequally sized countries, using the geographical interpretation of the Hotelling line. We analyse the trade and welfare effects of international trade between these two countries. The welfare analysis indicates that in this framework the large country benefits from free trade and the small country may be hurt by opening to trade. This finding is contrary to the results of Shachmurove & Spiegel (1995) as well as Tharakan & Thisse (2002), who use similar models to analyze size effects in international trade, where the small country usually gains from trade and the large country may lose.     

Shared renewable resources and gains from trade under technology standards

Using a two‐country, two‐good model of international trade, we examine gains from trade and strategic interaction in resource management among countries that share renewable resources such as fishery stocks. Two goods are a resource good, which is the harvest of the shared stock, and some other good that may be thought of as manufactures. The productivity of the resource good depends on harvesting technology and the stock level. This paper focuses on technology standards (e.g., restrictions on fishing gears, vessels, areas, and time) over other methods for resource management because they are most commonly implemented in fisheries. Technology standards are modeled as a restriction on the harvesting technology; that is, under strict technology standards, firms exploit resources as if they are using inferior harvesting technology. We show that an opening up of trade may reduce the shared stock and cause steady‐state utility to decrease in a resource‐good importing country and increase in a resource‐good exporting country. Strikingly, when the shared stock is in jeopardy (a high demand for the harvest), steady‐state harvest is maximized after an opening up of trade by what we call multilateral resource management in this paper and both countries gain from trade.     

Skill‐biased heterogeneous firms,trade liberalization and the skill premium

We propose a theory that rising globalization and rising wage inequality are related because trade liberalization raises the demand facing highly competitive skill‐intensive firms. In our model, only the lowest‐cost firms participate in the global economy exactly along the lines of Melitz ( 2003 ). In addition to differing in their productivity, firms differ in their skill intensity. We model skill‐biased technology as a correlation between skill intensity and technological acumen, and we estimate this correlation to be large using firm‐level data from Chile in 1995. A fall in trade costs leads to both greater trade volumes and an increase in the relative demand for skill, as the lowest‐cost/most‐skilled firms expand to serve the export market while less skill‐intensive non‐exporters retrench in the face of increased import competition. This mechanism works regardless of factor endowment differences, so we provide an explanation for why globalization and wage inequality move together in both skill‐abundant and skill‐scarce countries. In our model countries are net exporters of the services of their abundant factor, but there are no Stolper‐Samuelson effects because import competition affects all domestic firms equally.     

BILATERALISM AND FREE TRADE*

We study a setting with many countries; in each country there are firms that can sell in the domestic as well as foreign markets. Countries can sign bilateral free‐trade agreements that lower import tariffs and thereby facilitate trade. We allow a country to sign any number of bilateral free‐trade agreements. A profile of free‐trade agreements defines the trading regime. Our principal finding is that, in symmetric settings, bilateralism is consistent with global free trade. We also explore the effects of asymmetries across countries and political economy considerations on the incentives to form trade agreements.     

Trade and Global Pollution in Dynamic Oligopoly with Corporate Environmentalism

This paper examines the effects of international trade in the presence of dynamic oligopolistic competition where the stock of global pollution has a negative welfare effect and the oligopolists' objectives may include society's pollution damage as well as private profits. In a symmetric case where the number of firms, emission coefficient, and firms' environmental consciousness are the same in two countries, an opening of trade unambiguously improves each country's welfare in the short run. In the long run, however, trade increases the stock of global pollution and hence, whether opening of trade is beneficial depends on the parameters of the economy. If there are asymmetries between countries, the short‐run gains from trade in both countries are not necessarily guaranteed, because trade liberalization may increase output in one country and reduce it in the other. Moreover, free trade may result in lower pollution stock than under autarky.     

International Trade,Offshoring and Heterogeneous Firms

Recent trade models determine the equilibrium distribution of firm‐level efficiency endogenously and show that freer trade shifts the distribution towards higher average productivity because of entry and exit of firms. These models ignore the possibility that freer trade also alters the firm‐size distribution via international firm migration (offshoring); firms must, by assumption, produce in their “birth nation.” We show that when firms are allowed to switch locations, new productivity effects arise. Freer trade induces the most efficient small‐nation firms to move to the large nation. The large country gets an “extra helping” of the most efficient firms while the small nation's firm‐size distribution is truncated on both ends. This reinforces the large‐nation productivity gain while reducing or even reversing the small‐nation productivity gain. The small nation is nevertheless better off allowing firm migration.     

Endogenous Comparative Advantage*

We develop a model of trade between identical countries. Workers endogenously acquire skills that are imperfectly observed by firms; therefore, firms use aggregate country investment as the prior when evaluating workers. This creates an informational externality interacting with general equilibrium effects on each country's skill premium. Asymmetric equilibria with comparative advantages exist even when there is a unique equilibrium under autarky. Symmetric, no‐trade equilibria can be unstable under free trade. Welfare effects are ambiguous: trade can be Pareto‐improving even if it leads to an equilibrium between rich and poor countries, with no special advantage regarding country size.     

PROFIT TAX AND FIRM MOBILITY IN A THREE‐COUNTRY MODEL

We construct a three‐country model that incorporates international relocation by imperfectly competitive firms and examine both the effects of each country's profit tax reduction on the consumption and welfare of all countries, and the incentive for the countries to decrease the profit tax. In such a model, both the terms of trade and international relocation of firms offer the key to understanding the impacts of one country's profit tax policy. In particular, we note that the relocation of firms from the other two countries is positively related to the wage incomes of the third country through a shift in labour demand, and the terms‐of‐trade improvement is not only positively related to the wage incomes, but also negatively related to profit incomes through a shift in world consumption demand. We show that (i) in a three‐country world economy, regardless of the reduction's source, the profit tax reduction of each country leads to relocation of firms away from foreign countries toward its own economy and deteriorates the terms of trade of its economy and (ii) this becomes a ‘beggar‐thy‐neighbour’ policy in the sense that it lowers the welfare of the other foreign countries.     

Trade Liberalization with Heterogeneous Firms

This paper examines the various aspects of trade liberalization with heterogeneous firms using the Melitz (2003 ) model. We find a number of novel results and effects including a Stolper–Samuelson‐like result and several results related to the volume of trade, which are empirically testable. We also analyze what might be called an anti‐variety effect as the result of trade liberalization. We show that this effect is most pronounced for small countries. This resonates with the often voiced criticism from antiglobalists that globalization leads the world to become more homogeneous by eliminating local specialties. Nevertheless, we find that trade liberalization always leads to welfare gains in the model.     

Productivity and Firms’ Sales Destination: Chinese Characteristics

In the trade literature, it is often assumed that there is little or no trade cost within a country's borders, but large trade costs across a country's borders. Thus, productive firms self‐select into exporters and the less productive firms can only serve domestic consumers. This paper presents a similar but different case in China, whose domestic markets are segmented by provincial borders mainly owing to the various (hidden) protective measures favoring local firms. These discriminative measures are de facto trade barriers. It applies the heterogeneous trade theory to examine the effects of firms’ productivity on their sales choices in both the international and domestic markets, in the presence of intra‐national and international trade costs. We find that productive firms not only self‐select into exporters, but also into sales in other provincial markets. This pattern is sensitive to firms’ locations and ownerships. For foreign direct investment (FDI)‐controlled firms, increases in productivity are associated with a higher probability of selling into other provincial markets, rather than into international ones. Productivity increases for firms operating in the inland area exhibit different patterns than those in the Eastern area.     

不良贷款、路径依赖与中小企业的融资困难--对当前我国中小企业融资难的一种新解释

关于中小企业在经济发展中所占据的重要地位及作用在理论界早已形成较为一致的看法并为各国政府所重视.目前,虽然中小企业与金融机构之间已经普遍建立起了较为稳定的合作关系,但中小企业的融资难问题仍然是制约中小企业发展的最大瓶颈.本文根据转型时期我国银行和企业的基本特征,建立了一个包括家庭-企业-银行的三部门两期模型,从我国国有银行的体制利弊出发,运用路径依赖的理论,对不良贷款在造成我国中小企业融资困难时的作用机理进行了深入分析,并讨论了单纯的贸易部门开放和贸易金融部门的同时开放对解决中小企业融资难的不同效果,以期对将来的改革有所启示.     

Dialect,transaction cost and intra-national trade: evidence from China

Growing evidence emphasizes the important role of network effects on bilateral trade. This paper proposes a new factor – dialect difference, which decreases social network across regions, may increase transaction costs and thus shape interregional trade pattern. Taking China as an example, we use a gravity model considering network effects and provincial data from 1997 to 2009 to examine the effect of dialect difference on intra-national trade. We find that dialect difference has a significantly negative effect on interprovincial trade. Moreover, this paper explores the time dimension of the effect of dialect difference. We find that the negative effects of dialect difference on trade have been diminishing over time. Migration and the promotion of Mandarin have increased interregional cultural connections and thus mitigated the negative effects of dialect difference.     

Footloose Capital and Comparative Advantage

We investigate the effect of country size differentials and Ricardian technology differences on firms’ location decisions using a two‐country, two‐good (homogeneous agricultural good and differentiated manufacturing products), two‐factor (labour and footloose capital) simple new economic geography model. We found that manufacturing firms may agglomerate in a country where the manufacturing sector has a comparative disadvantage. In addition, when country size differentials and Ricardian technology differences exist between two countries, the key factor influencing firms’ location decisions changes according to the level of trade liberalization, from being market size‐dependent to becoming technology‐dependent.     

Explaining Japan's Unproductive Two Decades

Using industry‐ and micro‐level data, this paper examines why Japan's productivity growth has been slow for such a long time and how it can be accelerated in the future. Japan's capital–gross domestic product ratio continued to increase after 1991, and this increase in the capital–gross domestic product ratio must have contributed to the decline in the rate of return on capital in Japan by decreasing the marginal productivity of capital. On the other hand, Japan's accumulation of information and communication technology capital and intangible investment was very slow. Compared with large firms, which enjoyed an acceleration in the total factor productivity growth in recent years, Japanese small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises were left behind in information and communication technology capital and intangible investment, and their productivity growth has been very low. Furthermore, as large firms expanded their supply chains globally and relocated their factories abroad, research and development spillovers from large firms to small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises seem to have declined.     

Internet Technology and the Extensive Margin of Trade: Evidence from eBay in Emerging Economies

Online platforms such as eBay offer technologies that make it easier for firms to export. This paper dissects a new firm‐level dataset that covers sales made through eBay by sellers based in 21 emerging economies to provide a new lens through which to look at the effect of trade costs on the extensive margin of trade. Comparing eBay sellers with “offline” firm‐level data from the World Bank's Exporter Dynamics Database allows us to test whether the observed trade patterns on eBay fit with the trade‐liberalization predictions of heterogeneous‐firm models. We find that eBay firms export to more destinations, suggesting low destination‐specific fixed costs on eBay. We then show that the distribution of export destinations across eBay sellers is well approximated by a balls‐and‐bins model of frictionless trade, suggesting eBay indeed lowers fixed export costs. Finally, we compare the gravity of eBay with that of offline trade and find geographic distance, languages, and trade agreements to matter less for online trade.