Comovement in GDP trends and cycles among trading partners

It has long been recognized that business cycle comovement is greater between countries that trade more intensively with one another. However, nations face shocks to both the cyclical and trend components of their GDP series. Contrary to the result for cyclical fluctuations, we find comovement of shocks to the trend component of real GDP is weaker among countries that trade more intensively with one another. We simulate changes in ten-year output growth correlations corresponding to the estimated effects of trade and show that the impact of trade on trend comovement is quantitatively more important than its effect on cyclical comovement.     

The feasibility of currency union in Gulf Cooperation Council countries: A business cycle synchronisation view

This paper study the feasibility of a monetary union among Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, by measuring the evolution of economic integration among them. Considering the critical role of crisis and shocks in the integration process within the region, we determine whether GCC countries are characterised by a common business cycle. We suggest a different empirical approach that, unlike previous studies, allows one to endogenously detect structural changes in the comovement process between outputs. We apply a new measure for this region that is based on the time‐varying coherence function. Such a measure not only detects comovement dynamics but also distinguishes these dynamics in terms of short‐ and long‐term cycles. Additionally, we can test whether certain countries tend to be more synchronised. The main finding of this study is that not all GCC countries share a common short‐term business cycle. However, in the long term, all country‐pairs indicate a medium‐level synchronisation in the most recent subperiods. The new role of the United Arab Emirates’ regional trade platform allows it to strengthen long‐term business cycle comovement, thus differentiating it from other GCC country‐pairs that have shown a decline in the last two subperiods.     

Monetary policy in developing countries: lessons from Kenya

We estimate and then simulate a model of Kenyan economic development from 1965 to 1997 with two objectives in mind. The first is to demonstrate the degree of volatility of cyclical shocks that developing countries experience and to calculate the domestic nominal adjustments required by these shocks under both irrevocably fixed and free exchange rates.A comparison of these counterfactual nominal adjustments identifies the short-run implications for an economy of the choice of exchange rate regime. The second objective is to provide an estimate of the consequences for the economic development of Kenya of the lack of a coherent monetary order (excessive domestic credit expansion and overvalued exchange rate) throughout most of the period since 1965.A neoclassical convergence growth model based on Barro and Sala-i-Martin (1992) is employed and calibrated to represent the long-run growth path of real GDP in Kenya. A short-run four-sector CGE model is constructed that allows for cyclical movements of real GDP about the convergence growth path. The cyclical model focuses on the adjustment of the relative price of non-traded goods that is required to ensure short-run equilibrium in the non-traded goods sector. Given that terms of trade shocks dominated the macro environment of Kenya over the sample period, we find that a free exchange rate regime would have insulated the economy to a greater degree than an irrevocably fixed regime. In the growth decomposition exercise, we estimate that the two largest (and negative) influences on Kenyan economic growth were the decline in the external terms of trade from 100 in 1965 to an average of 79.5 over the 32-year time period, and the overvalued Kenyan shilling represented by a premium on the parallel market for foreign exchange. Overall, we estimate that the overvalued exchange rate reduced economic growth by an average of 0.47 per cent per annum over the 32 years.     

The trade comovement puzzle and the margins of international trade

Countries that trade more with each other tend to have more strongly correlated business cycles. Yet, traditional international business cycle models predict a much weaker link between trade and business cycle comovement. We propose that fluctuations in the number of varieties embedded in trade flows may drive the observed comovement by increasing the correlation among trading partners' aggregate productivity. Our hypothesis is that business cycles should be more strongly correlated between countries that trade a wider variety of goods. We find empirical support for this hypothesis. After decomposing trade into its extensive and intensive margins, we find that the extensive margin explains most of the trade–productivity and trade–output comovement. This result is striking because the extensive margin accounts for only a fourth of the variability in total trade. We then develop a two-country model with heterogeneous firms, endogenous entry, and fixed export costs, in which the aggregate productivity correlation increases with trade in varieties. A numerical exercise shows that our proposed mechanism increases business cycle synchronization compared with the levels predicted by traditional models.     

全球经济危机对我国出口贸易的影响

首先定性地分析了发达国家的经济发展和我国出口贸易十多年的走势,探究不同时期两者之间的变化是否趋同;然后选取美国、欧元区的国内GDP和商品相对价格指标,建立这两个因素对我国的出口贸易的影响程度的计量方程;随后,建立两个不同的VAR模型,第一个模型考察我国出口贸易和美、欧实体经济间的长期协整关系,运用脉冲响应函数分析外部冲击的滞后效应;针对当前金融危机造成货币紧缩,各国均采取一系列的刺激经济恢复的手段,在第二个VAR模型中,选取了较为代表性的外部因素——欧美的信贷政策和居民消费,以及作为国际资本流动因素的我国FDI,并运用脉冲响应函数考察这些政策因素对我国出口贸易产生的长期影响。最后根据实证结论提出政策建议。     

International trade in durable goods: Understanding volatility, cyclicality, and elasticities

Data for OECD countries document: 1. imports and exports are about three times as volatile as GDP; 2. imports and exports are pro-cyclical, and positively correlated with each other; 3. net exports are counter-cyclical. Standard models fail to replicate the behavior of imports and exports, though they can match net exports relatively well. Inspired by the fact that a large fraction of international trade is in durable goods, we propose a two-country two-sector model in which durable goods are traded across countries. Our model can match the business cycle statistics on the volatility and comovement of the imports and exports relatively well. The model is able to match many dimensions of the data, which suggests that trade in durable goods may be an important element in open-economy macro models.     

Can structural small open-economy models account for the influence of foreign disturbances?

This paper demonstrates that an estimated, structural, small open-economy model of the Canadian economy cannot account for the substantial influence of foreign-sourced disturbances identified in numerous reduced-form studies. The benchmark model assumes uncorrelated shocks across countries and implies that U.S. shocks account for less than 3% of the variability observed in several Canadian series, at all forecast horizons. Accordingly, model-implied cross-correlation functions between Canada and U.S. are essentially zero. Both findings are at odds with the data. A specification that assumes correlated cross-country shocks partially resolves this discrepancy, but still falls well short of matching reduced-form evidence. One central difficulty resides in the model's inability to account for comovement without generating counter factual implications for the real exchange rate, the terms of trade and Canadian inflation.     

Peace and Economic Interdependence in the Middle East

Can economic interdependence pacify the Middle East? While Middle Eastern countries have, for the most part, avoided the global trend of regionalism, this study provides empirical evidence that Middle Eastern countries with significant trade ties to other countries in the region do cooperate more and fight less. In addition to confirming the liberal notion of peace through trade, this study shows that several conditions outlined by the selectorate theory of political survival must be fulfilled if economic interdependence in the Middle East is to be achieved. A case study outlining Israeli and Turkish economic cooperation is used to show the selectorate model's regional compatibility. The regional applicability of the selectorate theory leads us to conclude that politically liberal countries are more likely to maintain economic relations with one another than with autocratic ones. Since liberal countries will be more economically interdependent with one another they will also be more peaceful towards one another. Ultimately, then, this study concludes that political liberalisation is one way of enhancing regional economic interdependence and consequently the prospects for a more peaceful Middle East.     

Can the standard international business cycle model explain the relation between trade and comovement?

Recent empirical research finds that pairs of countries with stronger trade linkages tend to have more highly correlated business cycles. We assess whether the standard international business cycle framework can replicate this intuitive result. We employ a three-country model with transportation costs. We simulate the effects of increased goods market integration under two asset market structures, complete markets and international financial autarky. Our main finding is that under both asset market structures the model can generate stronger correlations for pairs of countries that trade more, but the increased correlation falls far short of the empirical findings. Even when we control for the fact that most country-pairs are small with respect to the rest-of-the-world, the model continues to fall short. We also conduct additional simulations that allow for increased trade with the third country or increased TFP shock comovement to affect the country-pair's business cycle comovement. These simulations are helpful in highlighting channels that could narrow the gap between the empirical findings and the predictions of the model.     

The emergence of regional business cycle in Africa—a reality or myth? A Bayesian dynamic factor model analysis

This paper examines the evolution and the underlying forces of the business cycle co-movements among seven African (A-7) countries over the period 1970–2016. These countries accounted for over 60% of regional GDP, have abundant natural resources, access to the global capital market and widely viewed as potential drivers of regional (or “African”) business cycle. We model the national business cycle using real output, consumption and investment. We employ a dynamic factor model to decompose fluctuations in these macro-variables into a regional, country-specific and idiosyncratic components using Bayesian methods. We also analyse the relative importance of some notable drivers of business cycle fluctuations found in the literature. We find that the idiosyncratic component is dominating cyclical fluctuations in the A-7 countries, while country-specific and regional factors play a negligible role suggesting the inexistence of a common regional cycle despite deepening intra-African trade. Among the driving variables, the terms-of-trade shocks exert greater influence on the A-7 business cycle, while exchange rate movements and changes in money supply explain sizeable fluctuations in consumption and investment in most of the A-7 countries. Shocks associated with changes in relative domestic oil prices, monetary and fiscal policies cause large output fluctuations.     

Dissecting the dynamics of the US trade balance in an estimated equilibrium model

In an estimated two-country DSGE model, we find that shocks to the marginal efficiency of investment account for more than half of the forecast variance of cyclical fluctuations in the US trade balance. Both domestic and foreign marginal efficiency shocks generate a strong effect on the variability of the imbalance, through shifts in international relative absorption. On the other hand, shocks to uncovered interest parity and foreign export prices, which transmit mainly via the terms of trade and exchange rate, have a strong influence at short forecast-horizons, before the investment disturbances begin their dominance.     

我国对外贸易顺差相对规模的测度与分析：1994-2004

运用贸易顺差／进出口比率以及贸易顺差／国内生产总值比率两个指标对1994-2004年我国的贸易顺差相对规模进行的测度和分析表明，我国相对贸易顺差指标运行在较低水平并且出现显著的下降趋势。我国相对贸易顺差的变动与进出口总额的变动及国内生产总值的变动显著背离。国外对我国贸易保护主义的指责没有事实根据，对我国采取贸易保护主义措施也只能加大对我国的双边贸易逆差。     

International portfolios, capital accumulation and foreign assets dynamics

Despite the liberalization of capital flows among OECD countries, equity home bias remains sizable. We depart from the two familiar explanations of equity home bias: transaction costs that impede international diversification, and terms of trade responses to supply shocks that provide risk sharing, so that there is little incentive to hold diversified portfolios. We show that the interaction of the following ingredients generates a realistic equity home bias: capital accumulation and international trade in stocks and bonds. In our model, domestic stocks are used to hedge fluctuations in local wage income. Terms of trade risk is hedged using bonds denominated in local goods and in foreign goods. In contrast to related models, the low level of international diversification does not depend on strongly countercyclical terms of trade. The model also reproduces the cyclical dynamics of foreign asset positions and of international capital flows.     

Impact of trade openness on GDP growth: Does TFP matter?

ABSTRACT

The objective of this study is to empirically explore the impact of trade openness on GDP growth initiating with the idea that trade openness cannot be fully characterized through the different openness measures only, we propose to account for total factor productivity (TFP) development level as an additional dimension of countries’ trade integration. Our empirical application is based on 35 years’ balanced panel of 82 countries spanning 1980–2014. To address the potential endogeneity issue, we use the system GMM estimator developed for dynamic panel data models. The results outline that there exists an interesting non-linear pattern between trade openness and GDP growth when TFP development level is taken as an intervening variable into account: trade may have a negative impact on GDP growth when countries have specialized in low-TFP development level; trade openness clearly boosts GDP growth once countries exhibit a minimum threshold of TFP development level. Therefore, there is some pattern of complementarity between trade openness and TFP development level so that the higher the TFP development level, the higher the impact of the trade openness on GDP growth.     

Convergence of shocks and trade in the enlarged European Union

This paper explores the relation between trade flows and cross-country symmetry of supply and demand shocks using data from the EU-27 countries. Increased bilateral trade intensity is found to have a positive impact on the correlation of both demand and supply shocks. Intra-industry trade is found to be positively linked to correlations of supply-side shocks but negatively linked to correlations of demand shocks. Our results thus provide support for the argument that aggregate demand spillovers and intra-industry trade, rather than specialization, dominate in the process through which trade flows affect the cross-country transmission of shocks in Europe. At the same time, our estimates suggest that monetary-policy convergence in Europe (the circulation of the euro), while having increased symmetry of supply-side shocks, has had no direct favourable impact on symmetry of demand shocks. By contrast, the process of fiscal-policy convergence is found to have resulted in more correlated demand shocks across the EU member states.     

Rainfall,financial development,and remittances: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

We use annual variations in rainfall to examine the effects that exogenous, transitory income shocks have on remittances in a panel of 41 Sub-Saharan African countries during the period 1970–2007. Our main finding is that on average rainfall shocks have an insignificant contemporaneous effect on remittances. However, the marginal effect is significantly decreasing in the share of domestic credit to GDP. So much so, that at high levels of credit to GDP rainfall shocks have a significant negative effect on remittances, while at low levels of credit to GDP the effect of rainfall on remittances is significantly positive.     

技术性贸易壁垒分析及对策研究

在世界经济一体化成为不可逆转的趋势下，各国之间的贸易往来不断加深。近年来贸易保护主义抬头．以技术性贸易壁垒为主的新兴贸易保护手段日益盛行。超出合理范围的技术性贸易壁垒，人为地给商品的进出口制造障碍，违背了WID自由贸易的宗旨，给广大发展中国家造成了严重的不利影响。本文分析了技术性贸易壁垒产生和发展的背景以及我国遭受技术性贸易壁垒限制的主要原因，并在此基础上探讨了应对措施和方法。     

The crisis-resilience of services trade

Much attention has been focused on the impact of the current crisis on goods trade; hardly any on its impact on services trade. Using new trade data from the USA, and more aggregate data from other OECD countries, the authors show that services trade is weathering the current crisis much better than goods trade. On the basis of new evidence from Indian services exporters, it is suggested that services trade is more robust relative to goods trade for three reasons: less cyclical demand; lesser dependence on external finance; and few explicitly protectionist measures so far taken in services.     

Business cycle synchronisation in East Asia: The role of value‐added trade

We empirically investigate the relationship between business cycle synchronisation and the role of value‐added trade focusing on a panel of 12 Asian countries from 1995 to 2011. In addition, we propose the inclusion of two novel determinants, for example external value‐added trade intensity and exchange rate volatility and also saturate our empirical model with other common determinants found in the literature. Our findings first confirm that value‐added trade intensity, rather than gross trade intensity, has a sizable, positive and statistically significant impact on synchronisation among East Asian countries. Second, the exchange rate volatility has a significant negative effect on the business cycle synchronisation, which verifies that the exchange rate volatility is another important determinant of business cycle synchronisation. Our findings have important implications for the monetary cooperation in the region: strengthening trade linkage could reduce the costs of monetary cooperation by increasing the incidence of symmetric shocks.     

Quantifying the evolution of world trade, 1870–1949

The typical narrative regarding the evolution of world trade prior to World War II refers to a secular rise starting around 1870 and a subsequent collapse beginning in 1914. This narrative, however, is based on measures of trade openness that do not fully take into account purchasing power differences across countries. Due to lack of alternative data, the measures employed in the existing literature are typically based on non-PPP-adjusted trade data denominated by PPP-adjusted GDP data. The present paper seeks to resolve this inconsistency by constructing new trade share estimates for 62 countries, representing 90% of world GDP, for the period from 1870 to 1949. Our estimates combine historical import and export figures with non-PPP-adjusted GDP values that we estimate via the short-cut method. Our estimates confirm qualitatively the narrative of a dramatic rise and fall of world trade over this period. Yet, they indicate that this rise and fall was quantitatively much more pronounced. We find that trade shares were on average 38% higher than previously documented and the world's level of trade openness in 1913 was comparable to that in 1974.