Foreign trade, environmental protection and sustainable economic growth in China

Since the 1990s, China has exhibited growth in both foreign trade and the economy. Promoting environmental protection and sustainable economic growth are main concerns in the academic profession in the country. This paper makes an empirical analysis of trade and environmental pollution, and discusses the inherent relationship between foreign trade, environmental protection and sustainable economic growth. In addition, this paper makes several policy suggestions with a view to adjusting trade structure, enforcing environmental protection and promoting sustainable economic growth in China.     

Political economy of China’s trade policy: the evidence from industrial protection in 1990s

The theory of the political economy of trade policy, combining public choice and neoclassical trade theories, studies the level and pattern of trade intervention from the perspective of policy decision-making process, by stressing on income distribution instead of economic efficiency. The paper attempts to apply such an endogenous trade theory to an empirical study of China. On the basis of a formal revised model of political economy of trade protection, it tests theoretical hypotheses concerning the political and economic determinants of cross-sector trade protection in the Chinese industry at various periods. The results show that trade protection in China fits into China’s national development strategy of fast catching-up with the developed world.     

阿根廷经济危机与全球化遭遇挫折

拉丁美洲最先卷入了全球化进程，阿根廷是西方媒体称赞的全球化楷模，但近来阿根廷却爆发了严重经济危机，导致拉美出现了反全球化的新浪潮。     

Used automobile protection and trade: Gravity and ordered probit analysis

There is a great deal of protection against used automobile imports in many countries of the world that has gone largely unnoticed in the trade policy literature. Indeed, there has been no recent attempt to systematically analyze the determinants of used automobile trade and the role of protection in this trade. This paper makes a preliminary attempt, introducing an ordered measure of protection levels in 132 countries. A gravity model of used automobile exports from the United States shows that protection measures against used automobile import have a statistically-significant, suppressive effect on trade flows. An ordered probit analysis of the protection measures themselves points to new automobile production interests as a key factor behind used automobile protection. Other relevant explanatory factors of protection are income levels, democratic regime, transitional status, WTO membership, and income distribution.First version received: December 2002/Final version received: August 2003The authors would like to thank Ken Button, Michael Ferrantino, Kingsley Haynes, the late Don Lavois, Keith Maskus, Arvind Panagariya, Baldev Raj, Thomas Strattman, Roger Stough, Wendy Takacs, Michael Walsh, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and discussions.     

中韩贸易平衡研究

中韩贸易的快速增长又引起新的问题——贸易严重失衡。通过加强与韩磋商、调整对韩出口商品结构、扩大对韩出口，从而促使双边贸易在动态中平衡或基本平衡，来形成优势互补、共同发展的长期合作局面。     

Tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade in Hungary: The impact of the Uruguay Round and EU accession

International trade has featured prominently in Hungary's rapid transition to a market economy. This paper reports some relatively simple summary and complementary indicators for tariffs and non-tariff barriers (NTBs) to trade, which are designed to reflect the level and structure of tariffs and the scope of NTBs in Hungary. The existence of tariff 'spikes' and highly pervasive NTBs in certain sectors constitutes prima facie evidence that the domestic dead-weight efficiency and net welfare losses caused by tariff and non-tariff protection as well as the costs to consumers could be high. The indicators are used to highlight several key developments associated with Hungary's transition to a market economy, implementation of the Uruguay Round (UR) agreements and possible accession to the EU.     

中欧关系中的香港因素探析

在一个半世纪的英殖民统治时期．香港就逐渐成为中国与欧洲乃至西方交流的一座桥梁。自1997年主权回归后。香港在“一国两制”下的特殊地位以及欧盟对香港经济政治事务的密切关注使其在中欧关系中发挥着独特的影响。香港既可以成为中欧之间密切经贸联系的桥梁和纽带,也可能因其内部政治事务的发展而对中欧关系构成挑战。为此,我们在战略性地推动香港在中欧关系中的“门户”作用的同时,也不能忽视外来势力对中国主权与安全构成的潜在威胁。     

Informed trade,uninformed trade and stock price delay

The probability of informed trading (PIN), a measure of information-based trading risk, has been broadly applied to empirical studies on asset pricing. However, it is still controversial whether PIN measures exclusively the risk of firm-specific private information or it also captures the private interpretation of market wide public information. This article examines the relevance of PIN to the delayed response of stock prices to market-wide information. We find that PIN significantly explains individual stock price delay even controlling for size, liquidity and risk, and low-PIN stock prices adjust to market information more rapidly not only because of a notably high level of informed trading but also an even much higher level of uninformed trading. Our findings support the notion that PIN also captures the private skilled interpretation of public common factor information by sophisticated investors, and provide new empirical evidence on how information-based trading affects the speed at which stock prices adjust to information.     

Effects of trade diversion and trade creation of MERCOSUR on US and world apple markets

Apples are the third most valuable fruit in the United States and account for 18% of US fruit exports. Chile is a major competitor to the United States in the MERCOSUR market, since it is one of the leading apple producing countries and enjoys the tariff reductions as a member of MERCOSUR. Consequently, Chilean exports displace US exports in MERCOSUR. In addition, other MERCOSUR members import more from lower-cost Chile, leading to a reduction in production and an increase in consumption in these countries. This study develops a theoretical and an empirical model of world apple market to quantify the trade diversion and trade creation effects of the MERCOSUR free trade agreement and to estimate the welfare impacts.     

The explanatory power of market-based trade theories for the trade between market economies and reform countries

We try to explain the bilateral trade structure between Austria and three of its former socialist neighbours by trade theories developed for market economies, specifically focussing on the Heckscher-Ohlin model in its commodity version. We use data on factor intensities in about 100 industries in the EC and in Austria and can explain a modest amount of the trade structure before and after the start of the transition process and to some degree also of the change in the trade structure. The restrictions given by the data, the absence of a price system in socialist countries and the disequilibria in the actual trade suggest why the explanatory power of the tested theory is not higher. The study however indicates that at least some part of the industry in the former Czechoslovakia and in Poland had been well endowed with capital and energy before the transition. In the first five years of the transition a balanced trade turned into a high deficit of the reform countries.The authors wish to thank the participants of the EMPIRICA ECONOMIC POLICY FORUM Consequences of Eastern European Reform in Vienna, October 18, 1993 for an intensive discussion. Thanks to Robert Holzmann, Michael Landesmann, Gabor Oblath, Sandor Richter, Gunther Tichy, Michael L. Wyzan for comments. We also thank Christa Magerl and Elisabeth Neppl-Oswald for the calculations and for reading various drafts of the paper.     

The trade impact of European Union agricultural preferences

We assess the impact on agricultural trade of European Union (EU) trade policies, using a gravity model based on disaggregated trade flows from 161 developing countries (DCs) to 15 EU member countries. We use a sample selection framework to account for potential selection bias of positive trade flows and provide an explicit measure for relative preference margins. From a policy perspective, our results debunk some of the most widespread criticisms of preferential policies: EU preferences matter and have a positive impact on DCs agricultural exports at both the extensive and intensive margins, although with significant differences across sectors.     

Bilateral trade with apositional traders

We study the standard model of bilateral trade under incomplete information dropping the assumption that traders know on which side of the market they are. We consider two mechanisms that differ only in the number of offers that an agent can submit. These mechanisms are realistic and they are ex post individually rational (i.e. regret free), while the usual mechanisms proposed in the literature satisfy the weaker requirement of interim individual rationality. Properties of the Bayesian equilibria are described for the general case. For the case where valuations are uniformly distributed in the unit square, two types of equilibria are derived for each mechanism and their efficiency properties are analyzed. As expected, the equilibria under the double offer mechanism are less inefficient than those under the single offer mechanism.     

A simple model of service trade with time zone differences

This note proposes a two-country model of service trade that captures the role of time zone differences as a determinant of trade patterns. It is shown that the utilization of communication networks induces dramatic change in industrial structure due to firms taking advantage of time zone differences.     

影响中国贸易条件的制度因素与改革方略

随着中国对外贸易的快速发展,中国的贸易条件成为经济学者们讨论的焦点,如何改善中国的贸易务件也成为中国 经济发展所面临的严峻课题。本文通过深入分析指出,当前不合理的贸易制度是制约中国贸易条件改善的根本因素,并在此 基础上提出了利于改善中国贸易条件的贸易发展战略以及为实施该战略所应采取的相应的改革措施。     

论商业秘密的民法保护

民法保护是商业秘密法律保护的重要组成部分,对于保护商业秘密权利人的合法权益,维护正常的市场竞争环境,建立和谐的市场竞争秩序,具有十分重要的作用。在民法保护中,应当准确界定商业秘密的权利归属,合理划分侵权诉讼的举证责任,明确商业秘密被侵权时可采取的法律保护形式,依法判定侵权人应当承担的民事法律责任。     

Understanding the recent Sino-U.S. trade conflict

ABSTRACT

To understand Sino-U.S. trade relations, this article interprets the trade imbalance between China and the United States from the Trump administration’s perspective. The Trump administration claims that the Chinese government’s subsidies and high import tariffs cause the Sino-U.S. trade deficit, resulting in job losses in the U.S. The Trump administration therefore argues that imposing high tariffs on Chinese exports can resolve the deficit. The article finds that U.S. statistical accounting overestimates the deficit. Reducing China’s imports cannot increase U.S. employment, and China provides the United States with low-price and high-quality products. Chinese investors tend to invest the surplus by purchasing U.S. Treasury bonds. In addition, the United States limits Chinese investments due to ‘national security’ concerns. China’s upgrading to the high end of the global value chain is a consequence of economic development. Therefore, the two countries should rebalance Sino-U.S. trade by seeking economic and trade cooperation via trade negotiations.     

The signaling power of trade protection

This paper proposes an empirical analysis to provide new insight into the trade diversion effects of antidumping (AD) policy. Trade diversion is the shift in trade from named countries in an AD investigation to non-named countries. Previous studies have concluded that AD action causes a considerable drop in exports from named countries, however the extent to which trade is diverted to non-named countries is still an open debate. This paper examines to see whether AD action on named countries can have signaling effects on non-named countries. To examine the trade effects on non-named countries, a time series data at an 8-digit product level is constructed for all cases initiated between 1997 and 2003 in the European Union. The paper provides evidence that antidumping policy has signaling effects on non-named imports.     

Domestic trade protection in vertically-related markets

We consider trade policy in a setting where home country firms are fully dependent on vertically-integrated foreign firms for supplies of a key input. We find that vertically-integrated firms' strategic considerations play an important role and that, in particular, a tariff on final goods may either increase or decrease the domestic price of final goods. The import of final goods is always taxed to extract and shift rents from foreign firms, while the import of intermediate goods can be either taxed or subsidized. The market structure is shown to be an important consideration when making trade policy.     

Gains from trade with overlapping generations

Summary This paper examines the welfare effects of international trade in a context of overlapping generations. It shows that, for a single trading country, uncompensated free trade may be Pareto inferior to autarky. However, for each government there are compensation schemes which guarantee welfare improvements for all local individuals when free trade is allowed, or when for a small open economy the terms of trade improve or the number of tradable goods increases, or when a customs union is formed.We acknowledge with gratitude the probing comments of Henry Y. Wan, Jr. and two anonymous referees.     

Economic growth, international trade and air pollution: A decomposition analysis

This study analyzes the impact of economic growth and international trade on the level of air pollution. This is done by the estimation of the Structural Equation Model with two factors describing the structure of economic activity and air pollution intensity. It is further assumed that there is causal link between these two factors and that they are influenced by per capita income, international trade intensity and the Freedom House Index.The estimation results suggest that in the developing countries analyzed both international trade and per capita income lead to changes in the structure of economic activity and - as a consequence - to the increase in air pollution. In addition, the estimation results suggest that the impact of economic growth on air pollution intensity varies between the developing and developed countries. In the developing countries, this impact occurs through the change of the structure of economic activity, while in the developed countries, this impact is mainly direct and occurs through the sum of the scale effect and income effect. The positive sign of this impact suggests the dominance of the scale effect over the income effect.