Trade liberalization and the Mexican steel industry

The impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on the competitive positions of Mexican and U.S. steel producers is investigated employing a translog cost function with four inputs (capital, labor, domestic intermediate goods, and foreign intermediate goods) to examine scale characteristics and input substitution in Mexican steel production. Results are consistent with diseconomies of scale at high levels of output and with substitute relationships between all input pairs except labor and domestic intermediate goods. Thus, output growth will likely result in cost reductions for Mexican producers only if the industry reaps significant benefits from substitution of foreign inputs for domestic. Recent increases in Mexico's imports of finished steel have much exceeded those of steel industry inputs, and it therefore does not seem likely that a Mexican cost advantage over steel producers in the United States will soon emerge as a result of economies of scale.     

对四川省纺织服装产业发展的建议

进入21世纪以来,全球纺织业步入了新一轮调整升级周期。中国纺织服装产业转型升级与创新驱动的基本路径是由劳动成本优势向劳动效率优势转型,进而再向科技加时尚转型。以四川省纺织服装产业发展为例分析,可以看到未来面临四大机遇与两大挑战,综合分析形成基本判断:中国东部纺织服装产业为分享西部未来的市场,肯定要向四川省转移部分力量;而四川省承接产业转移,发挥低碳资源优势、特色资源优势,可以良性发展纺织服装产业。     

Challenges in the Portuguese textile and clothing industry: a fight for survival

The Portuguese textile and clothing industry thrived after 1960, when Portugal joined the European Free Trade Association, and it has been an important industry in Portugal in terms of value added, employment, and exports. Nevertheless, the industry has experienced significant challenges with the final integration of the apparel and textile industry into GATT on 1 January 2005, as well as the admission of relatively low-wage Bulgaria and Romania into the European Union in 2007. This paper describes recent trends in the industry between 1995 and 2016, including a substantial decrease in output after 2005 and recovery in recent years. In addition, a translog cost function is used to examine the existence of economies of scale, the relationships among inputs, and the effects of the 2005 GATT entry on the industry’s costs. The findings include strong evidence of economies of scale, consistent with the many small and mid-sized enterprises in the Portuguese textile and clothing industry. The results are also consistent with capital and labour being complementary inputs, while other input pairs are substitutes. The entry into GATT may have had a negative impact on cost, though the evidence for that effect is weak.     

加入WTO对福建省纺织服装业的影响

纺织工业是福建省传统产业,服装工业是我省改革开放以来发展最为迅猛的产业之一。1999年,全省规模以上纺织、服装企业完成工业总产值(当年价)186.29亿元,占全部规模以上工业总产值的8.4％。同时纺织服装企业也是我省出口的生力军,1999年全省规模以上纺织服装业完成出口交货值78.97亿元,占纺织眼装业销售产值的比     

广东省纺织业技术创新模式研究

介绍了广东省纺织业技术引进、消化吸收、创新的现状,根据广东纺织企业几个典范,重点剖析各企业的创新模式特征,提出了技术创新模式的应用范围及趋势,对促进我国纺织业技术创新发展有着积极意义和借鉴价值。     

Estimating productivity and returns to scale in the US textile industry

In light of the textile industry's growing foreign competition, trade deficit and job loss, we estimate its productivity and efficiency for the period 1975–93 utilizing a variable elasticity of substitution production function. The results indicate that, despite job losses, the industry adjusted by increasing labor productivity and maintaining fairly stable profits. This performance does not warrant protectionist policies. However, with an elasticity of factor substitution less than one and decreasing, the impact of factor price increases could result in higher apparel prices and preference for cheaper imports. Furthermore, with an elasticity of capital output rapidly decreasing, significant technological improvements will be required to improve competitiveness since textile production is capital intensive. Recently revised rules on trade liberalization could increase competition in the industry. First version received: October 1999/Final version received: August 2000     

Cost relationships and challenges in the Spanish apparel industry

In the twenty-first century, the Spanish textile and apparel industries have faced substantial challenges, resulting in declining sales and employment. This study concentrates on the apparel industry, since its economic challenges and opportunities differ from those of the textile industry. The analysis employs a transcendental logarithmic cost function to investigate the presence of scale economies and the interrelationships among inputs of domestic capital, labour and intermediate goods as well as outsourced intermediate products for the Spanish apparel industry and discusses the implications for its future competitiveness and the demand for domestic inputs. The results are consistent with diseconomies of scale or, in the case of one model, possibly constant returns to scale, indicating that some contraction of the industry due to international competition will not raise unit costs. All of the inputs except for capital and intermediate goods were found to be substitutes. An important finding is that the cross elasticity values of both labour and domestic intermediate goods with respect to the price of outsourced goods have risen over time, indicating an increased sensitivity of the quantity demanded of these home-country inputs to the price of imported intermediate goods. It follows that domestic input markets will be more substantially affected by international prices for outsourced inputs as the industry tries to maintain its competitiveness in the global environment.     

Local variety and innovation performance in the EU textile and clothing industry

ABSTRACT

A large body of the literature showed that related variety at local level is more relevant than unrelated variety for explaining the innovation performance of firms. Knowledge relatedness is usually measured by considering activities within the same industry (i.e. the same two-digit code) while activities in different industries are associated with unrelated variety. This approach is challenged by the increasing relevance of transversal technologies, i.e. technologies that are developed and applied in rather different sectors. As a result, between industry variety (i.e. unrelated variety) is expected to be more important than within industry variety (i.e. related variety). We test this hypothesis by examining the innovation activities of firms in the textile and clothing industry. The innovation model of these firms is characterized by low investment in R&D, little capabilities for autonomous innovation and dependence from knowledge suppliers belonging to different sectors. The empirical analysis, carried out over the 1996–2014 period at the EU NUTS2 level, shows that between industry variety has a greater impact than within industry variety for the innovative performance of firms.     

外国直接投资:全球化与发展、新的挑战与机遇

3月17日,邓宁教授在商务部与联合国贸发会议联合在天津经济技术开发区举办的第二届国际投资促进论坛上发表演讲,重点阐述了在全球化和发展过程中,外国直接投资所起到的作用以及对各国外资政策提出的挑战和机遇,并提出了相应的政策建议。本刊特别约请南开大学跨国公司研究中心冼国明教授和葛顺奇博士对邓宁教授的演讲进行了整理,并经邓宁教授同意,在本刊公开发表。     

Globalization and inter‐industry wage differentials in China

This paper explores the relationship between globalization and inter‐industry wage differentials in China by using a two‐stage estimation approach. Taking advantage of a rich household survey dataset, this paper estimates the wage premium for each industry in the first stage conditional on individual worker and firm characteristics. Alternative measures of globalization are considered in the second stage: trade openness and capital openness. A disaggregation of trade into trade in final and intermediate goods shows that increases in import (export) shares of final goods reduce (increase) the wage premia significantly, whereas imports or exports of intermediate goods do not explain differences in industry wage premia. This finding is supported by stronger effects for final goods trade in coastal than noncoastal regions. Our results also show a positive relationship between capital openness and industrial wage premia, though this finding is less robust when potential endogeneity issues are allowed for.     

纺织工业面临的国际竞争环境与对策

我国的纺织工业具有悠久历史,是我国工业化进程中的传统支柱产业,也是我国国际竞争力较强和国际依存度较高的产业。我国正日益成为世界性的纺织品服装供应基地。加入世贸组织后,我国纺织工业将在更大范围、更深层次上融入全球经济,这将对我国纺织工业的发展产生重大而深远的影响。国际竞争环境首先,在比较优势的推动下,资本、技术等生产要素的跨国流动,引发了世界范围的纺织生产区域结构的变化,生产能力迅速向具有劳动成本优势的地区集中。随着发达国家产业结构的不断演进,世界纺织工业重心不断推移。从20世纪60年代开始,欧洲、美国和日本等…     

The impact of environmental regulations on international competitiveness of textile industry in China

A greater focus of environmental protection is directed toward environmental regulations in China. This paper focuses on environmental regulations and their impact on textile industry. The academic circle does not reach a consensus on the relationship between environmental regulations and international competitiveness. Some hold the view that environmental regulations lower international competitiveness while others think that environmental regulations improve both environment and economic performance. This paper aims to analyze the impact of the environmental regulations on the international competitiveness of textile industry in China. This study starts with theories relative to this subject; the second part, based on the impact mechanism of environmental regulations on competitiveness, analyzes the environmental impact on textile from the perspective of cost and market. The conceptual exploration comes to the conclusion that environmental regulations make a negative impact on the international competitiveness on the cost side and improve it by means of innovation and product differentiation on market side; the third part gives time series evidence to examine the impact. In this part the Pearson Correlation Analysis is conducted based on the data of China＇s textile industry of the period from 1991 to 2005. It turns out to prove that the negative environmental impact on cost side exceeds the positive environmental impact on market side, namely, environmental regulations deteriorate the international competitiveness in textile industry as a whole during the inspected period.     

An analysis of environmental risks in Sichuan Province to relocate the textile industry from east China

The trend of transferring eastern textile industry to western regions in China is increasingly obvious.As for Sichuan Province,it is a chance to promote economic development and upgrade the textile industry through the incident compared with the other western regions.This paper analyzes the risk to environment in Sichuan Province when accepting the transfer and puts forwards relevant measures to this point.     

Foreign direct investment and industry response to organized crime: The Mexican case

Organized crime is a disincentive for investment and business activity. We use murders as a proxy for presence of regional organized crime and study the relation between direct foreign investment and organized crime for different industries in Mexico. Our contribution is the focus on sectoral differences. The data is for net foreign direct investment from 116 countries into the 32 Mexican states from 2004 to 2010. Imputing causality, we find that organized crime deters foreign investment in financial services, commerce, and agriculture, but not oil and mining sectors for which we find increased crime associated with increased investment. There is no effect of organized crime on foreign investment in manufacturing.     

产业集群与区域竞争力关系研究——以华容纺织业为例

产业集群是产业组织的新发展和地区经济的新现象。作为产业空间的集聚现象,产业集群对区域竞争力具有很大的提升作用。以华容县纺织业为例,通过理论和实际相结合的方法分析了产业集群对华容县区域竞争力的作用机制,并提出相应的对策和建议。     

美国纺织服装产业的贸易保护及对策

美国的纺织服装业自1790年建立以来一直得到政府的贸易保护,保护的方式由前期的高关税,发展到配额和自愿出口限制,目前正在向反倾销和保障措施转变。美国纺织服装业早已丧失了比较优势,在政府的保护下,虽然保有一定的规模,但在近十多年不断衰退。预计今后几年美国纺织服装业将进行结构调整,中美之间就中国纺织品贸易问题的斗争会很激烈。中国应当为此做好充分的准备。一、美国纺织服装产业贸易保护政策的演变美国的纺织服装工业开始于1790年,塞缪尔·斯拉特(SamuelSlater)利用其在英国阿克莱特所学到的技术经验建立了美国第一家棉纺工厂,至…     

纺织品一体化对孟加拉成衣业的影响

根据世界贸易组织<纺织品与服装协定>(ATC)的规定,多种纤维协议(MFA)于2005年1月1日宣告终止,从此世界纺织品贸易实现一体化,长达几十年的纺织品贸易扭曲体制有望消除,这是乌拉圭回合谈判的重要成果,也是现行多边贸易体制赖以存在的重要基础.