International Trade and Growth Miracles: the Implications of Nonhomothetic Preferences

If the rate of saving increases with income then a low per capita level of the capital stock may be self‐sustaining. In these circumstances international trade may allow an economy to quickly increase its per capita capital stock in a self‐reinforcing “growth miracle” process. A labor‐abundant economy trading with a capital‐abundant economy will see its wage rate rise relative to autarky. This rise in the wage rate also increases the savings rate and so raises the following period’s per capita capital stock. In this way a low‐income economy may exhibit large and permanent increases in its level of GDP per capita after opening its markets to international trade.     

Preferences,Country Bias,and International Trade

The paper analyzes international trade in a Ricardian world where consumer preferences exhibit country bias. In particular, consumers differentiate between identical physical goods by country of manufacture. In contrast to the classical Ricardian model, the pattern of international specialization in production depends on the preference structure. Possible equilibrium configurations include ones where both countries specialize incompletely and trade in both commodities, as well as situations where the pattern of specialization and trade is the reverse of that in the classical Ricardian world. Both interindustry and intraindustry trade can occur simultaneously, though there are no market imperfections or scale economies.     

International Trade and Volume Patterns under Quasilinear Preferences

We formally analyze the pattern and volume of trade by embedding quasilinear preferences in the standard perfectly competitive, two‐factor, two‐good, two‐country trade model. Quasilinear preferences deliver a natural partition of the two goods into a luxury and a necessity, and preserve the validity of the Heckscher–Ohlin and Heckscher–Ohlin–Vanek theorems. In addition, the predicted factor content of trade under quasilinear preferences is smaller (larger) than the predicted factor content of trade under homothetic preferences if and only if the luxury good is capital (labor) intensive. This result offers a novel explanation for the “missing‐trade” mystery.     

Task Routineness and Trade Policy Preferences

Understanding the formation of individual trade policy preferences is a fundamental input into the modeling of trade policy outcomes. Surprisingly, past studies have found mixed evidence that various labor market and industry attributes of workers affect their trade policy preferences, even though recent studies have found that trade policy can have substantial impacts on workers' incomes. This paper provides the first analysis of the extent to which task routineness affects trade policy preferences using survey data from the American National Election Studies. We find significant evidence that greater task routineness leads workers to be much more supportive of import restrictions, consistent with recent evidence on how trade openness puts downward pressure on employment and wages for workers whose occupations involve routine tasks. In fact, other than education levels, task routineness is the only labor market attribute that displays a robust correlation with individuals' stated trade policy preferences. We also provide evidence that there are some interactions between the economic and non‐economic factors in our study. For example, women's trade policy views are much more invariant to their labor market attributes than men, suggesting that women's views on this issue are driven more by personal and ideological beliefs than men.     

The Political Economy of Trade Preferences

This articles tests the implications the Grossman and Helpman "protection for sale" model. The goal is to address some of the problems associated with previous empirical studies. These problems are addressed using a data set derived from decisions reached by the president in cases involving product or beneficiary eligibility under the Generalized System of Preferences. The results provide some support for the Grossman and Helpman model, but they also indicate that factors not accounted for in this model play an important role in GSP eligibility decisions. (JEL F13 , F14 )     

Individual Preferences for Trade Partners in Taiwan

This article investigates economic factors and non‐economic factors of individual attitudes toward free‐trade agreements with different countries. Based on the Stolper–Samuelson theorem, highly skilled workers in Taiwan should be more supportive of free trade with China and less supportive of free trade with the United States than should unskilled workers in Taiwan. Using survey data from Taiwan, we find that highly educated people in Taiwan are more supportive of free trade with both the United States and China, and the effects of education are much stronger with respect to free trade with China. We also find that individual risk attitudes, national identity, and ethnicity play important roles in explaining trade preferences.     

Four Simple Tests of Campaign Contributions and Trade Policy Preferences

This paper uses campaign contribution data to examine trade policy preferences among political action committees. With perfect factor mobility, as the Heckscher–Ohlin (HO) model assumes, interest group trade positions should depend on their factor of production but not on their industry. We show, consistent with the 2 × 2 HO model, that capital groups consistently back representatives supporting trade liberalization while labor groups favor protectionists. Unlike previous work, we also measure the variation in trade policy preferences within capital and labor groups. We find evidence that the industry net export position significantly affects labor unions' trade policy preferences. Industry characteristics have no impact on capital group lobbying. The former result suggests that empirical analyses of labor PAC contributions that exclude industry characteristics may be misspecified.     

Political Proximity and International Trade

The impact of politics on international trade has often been excluded by economists both from theoretical and empirical analysis. In this study, we examine empirically the impact of politics on trade flows. Results indicate that political differences have an impact on bilateral trade that is robust to a wide range of econometric specifications. However, the impact of political differences on trade flows vanishes when the costs of reducing the latter become fairly important.     

International Trade and Strategic Privatization

The literature on mixed oligopoly does not consider the strategic interaction between governments when they decide whether to privatize their publicly‐owned firms. In order to analyze this question, we consider two countries and assume that publicly‐owned firms are less efficient than private firms. We obtain that when the marginal cost of the publicly‐owned firms takes an intermediate value, each government wants it to be the government of the other country that privatizes its publicly‐owned firm. In this case, only one government privatizes, and that government obtains lower social welfare and producer surplus than the other.     

Financial Dependence and International Trade

Does financial development translate into a comparative advantage in industries that use more external finance? The author uses industry‐level data on firms’ dependence on external finance for 36 industries and 56 countries to examine this question. It is shown that countries with better‐developed financial systems have higher export shares and trade balances in industries that use more external finance. These results are robust to the use of alternative measures of external dependence and financial development and are not due to reverse causality or simultaneity bias.     

Recycling and International Trade Theory

Recently recycling and the production of secondary materials have increased in many countries. However, there is little analysis examining the effects of recycling on comparative advantage, trade, and welfare. In a model with recycling sectors, the author examines whether the Rybczynski theorem is valid, how the price effects are modified, how a recycling subsidy changes the production structure and comparative advantage. It is found that demand has an effect on final goods production and comparative advantage since consumption goods are transformed into recycling inputs.     

International Trade and Currency Exchange

On the international scene, away from national legal rules, the use of different currencies is largely due to the operation of the "Invisible Hand". The paper develops a three-country model of the world economy. This links real trade patterns with currency exchange structures in a general equilibrium framework which includes transaction costs on foreign exchange markets. In the presence of strategic complementarities, there are multiple equilibrium structures of currency exchange for a given underlying real trade pattern. The existence conditions of these different equilibria are characterized, using the trade links between countries as the key parameters. Finally, repercussions on world output of the choice of a currency exchange structure are analysed.
"So much of barbarism, however, still remains in the transactions of most civilized nations, that almost all independent countries choose to assert their nationality by having, to their own inconvenience and that of their neighbours, a peculiar currency of their own."
John Stuart Mill, 1848.     

Biofuel Subsidies and International Trade

This paper explores optimal biofuel subsidies in a general equilibrium trade model. The focus is on the production of biofuels such as corn‐based ethanol, which diverts corn from use as food. In the small‐country case, when the tax on crude is not available as a policy option, a second‐best biofuel subsidy may or may not be positive. In the large‐country case, the twin objectives of pollution reduction and terms‐of‐trade improvement justify a combination of crude tax and biofuel subsidy for the food exporter. Finally, we show that when both nations engage in biofuel policies, the terms‐of‐trade effects encourage the Nash equilibrium subsidy to be positive (negative) for the food exporting (importing) nation.     

Increasing Returns and International Trade

The paper develops a model of international trade with increasing returns toscale by taking into account the possibility of cooperation among agents in an egalitarian economy. It is shown that each country gains from trade in a trading world in which there are arbitrary numbers of increasing-returns-to-scale goods, constant-returns-to-scale goods, factors of production, and countries.     

Institutional Quality and International Trade

Institutions—quality of contract enforcement, property rights, shareholder protection, and the like—have received a great deal of attention in recent years. Yet trade theory has not considered the implications of institutional differences, beyond treating them simply as different technologies or taxes. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we propose a simple model of international trade in which institutional differences are modelled within the framework of incomplete contracts. We show that doing so reverses many of the conclusions obtained by equating institutions with productivity. Institutional differences as a source of comparative advantage imply, among other things, that the less developed country may not gain from trade and factor prices may actually diverge as a result of trade. Second, we test empirically whether institutions act as a source of trade, using data on U.S. imports disaggregated by country and industry. The empirical results provide evidence of "institutional content of trade": institutional differences are an important determinant of trade flows.     

技术性壁垒与我国的对外贸易

随着关税壁垒作用日益削弱，技术性贸易壁垒(TBT)作为更隐蔽而且作用更强大的壁垒，已在客观上成为我国出口贸易的巨大障碍。目前技术性壁垒已经取代反倾销措施，成为阻碍我国出口贸易发展的第一大非关税壁垒。加入WTO后，我国的出口贸易将面临发达国家技术性壁垒的严峻挑战。     

European Agricultural Biotechnology Preferences and Policy: Growth and Trade Implications

European Union policies effectively prohibit the production and consumption of genetically modified agricultural products. This paper examines the prohibition's effects on research and development, innovation, trade flows, and economic growth using a Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson trade model with a neo‐ Schumpeterian approach. Restrictive European Union policies on biotechnology production and consumption result in: an effective export subsidy of capital to the South; changing trade flows; North America being the dominant producer of biotechnology research and development; the South being a dominant producer of biotechnology products; and the European Union being the dominant producer of traditional agricultural products.     

移民网络、国际贸易与区域贸易协定

本文从移民网络的角度探讨了区域贸易协定(FTA)缔结的动因问题,提出并证明了"移民网络促进FTA缔结"这一假说,并发现移民网络因素的加入可以将既有FTA缔结动因相关研究的模型预测准确率提升约4%,具有重要的意义。进一步的机制检验发现,移民网络主要通过促进双边贸易流来提升两国FTA的签订概率,表现为"移民网络—国际贸易—FTA缔结"这一核心发生机制。本文拓展性的细化研究还发现,无论从时间趋势或FTA缔结数量而言,移民网络对FTA缔结所起到的促进作用都呈现出边际递减规律;"移民网络—国际贸易—FTA缔结"机制在"南-北"国家对组合中会得到增强,但在"北-北"国家对组合中的表现较弱。本文的结论意味着,移民网络是发展中国家参与区域经济合作的重要资源,在当前贸易自由化多边进程受阻、逆全球化思潮涌动、国际秩序和规则面临重塑的背景下,充分发挥和利用"移民红利",对我国FTA战略的推进及世界FTA领域"中国范本"的探索有重要意义。     

我国服务和货物部门对外贸易对彼此的贡献率分析--基于1997年投入产出表及其扩展表的计算

国际服务贸易的发展与国际货物贸易密切相关,尤其是在中国这样一个国际货物贸易蓬勃发展的国家,因此,实证分析我国国际服务贸易与国际货物贸易的相互贡献程度很有必要.本文对我国服务进出口对货物部门和货物进出口对服务部门的贡献率进行了研究.从为对方生产部门增加值的形成和增长的贡献率来看,我国货物进出口对服务部门的贡献大于服务进出口对货物部门的贡献.这说明了我国对外货物贸易的蓬勃发展已经并且还会促进服务业的增长.但是,我国服务进出口对货物部门发展的贡献却相对小得多,说明我国国际服务贸易亟待发展.