论异质性厂商下的贸易自由化

1．引言近十年的经验研究表明,标准的新贸易理论对于同质厂商的假设忽略了许多现实的重要因素。例如,并非所有的厂商都在贸易部门进行贸易,而且同一部门内的出口厂商的生产力一般要高于该部门的非出口厂商(A．W,Chung和Roberts 2000,Bernard和Jensen 1995,1999a,b,2001；Clerides,Lach和Tybout 1998；Eaton,Kortum和Kramarz 2004；参见Tybout 2003 for a survey)。     

Technology Diffusion through Trade with Heterogeneous Firms

I investigate the long‐run implications of trade and technology diffusion through trade, when firms are heterogeneous and trade is costly. This paper integrates firm heterogeneity and trade into a product innovation growth model from endogenous growth theory. I find that although exposure to trade increases average productivity, it has an ambiguous effect on economic growth and consumer welfare.     

Trade Liberalization and Heterogeneous Technology Investments

We propose a trade model where heterogeneous firms decide on a productivity‐enhancing technology investment. The model analyzes the impact of multilateral trade liberalization on firm‐ and industry‐level productivity. Freer trade increases the incentives to invest in technology by raising export profits. It also dampens these incentives, however, as profits stemming from domestic sales are reduced. Only exporters benefit from the former positive effect. The shape of the distribution of efficiency draws, the level of trade costs and the technology intensity of the industry are key elements removing the ambiguities regarding the net impact of trade liberalization.     

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.     

多产品企业、中间品贸易自由化与产品范围

本文结合2000～2007年中国工业企业数据库和产品产量库,从生产层面刻画了我国多产品企业特征以及产品转换行为,并考察了中间品贸易自由化对企业生产产品范围的影响,研究发现:我国企业的产品结构相对单一,产品转换频率较低,企业通过产品转换实现的资源配置效应微乎其微;中间品关税下降显著促进了企业生产范围的扩张,并且在克服内生性、更换核心解释变量测算方法和采用倍差法等一系列稳健性检验以后,该研究结论依然成立;异质性检验表明,这一促进作用主要集中在高生产率企业以及新产品引入成本较低的地区;从影响机制来看,中间品贸易自由化对企业产品范围的积极影响主要来源于进口中间品价格下降而非进口产品种类增加。     

Trade Liberalization and the Efficiency of Firms in Indian Manufacturing

Has the efficiency of firms in India improved since its liberalization in 1991? The authors attempt to answer this question by analyzing the determinants of firm‐level efficiency in six manufacturing sectors in India while focusing on the effects of liberalization and domestic competition. They find that there was an increase in overall efficiency in the post‐reform period in India in five out of the six sectors. While imports do not seem to improve efficiency, liberalization did increase efficiency in four of the sectors.     

国外异质性厂商贸易理论研究综述

异质性厂商贸易理论代表了国际贸易理论最新发展趋势,研究的是微观经济主体--厂商的贸易和投资行为与自身特征的关系.厂商的市场进入方式与其生产率水平是相对应的,出口和贸易自由化能够提高行业生产率,汇率变化、贸易政策和产业集聚对厂商出口具有重要的影响,厂商进入出口市场前后存在自我选择效应和出口中学习效应,这两种效应都导致厂商生产率提高,最终生产率最高的厂商将以对外直接投资的方式进入国际市场.     

The Effects of Trade Liberalization between Heterogeneous Countries on Endogenous Mergers

This paper examines the effects of trade liberalization on merger behavior. We endogenize merger choice among owners in an oligopolistic industry in asymmetric countries to analyze the consequences of trade cost reductions on competitiveness and welfare. In this context, the non‐cooperative game supports asymmetric market structures. We also find that trade liberalization is not necessarily pro‐competitive in countries with the competitive advantage, even if trade costs are completely abolished. Moreover, the tariff‐jumping explanation of international mergers does not necessarily apply. The welfare analysis shows that merger behavior can significantly alter any gains from liberalization. Countries should consider enforcing competition in regional agreements. Specifically, to avoid a reduction in domestic welfare following trade‐liberalizing reductions in trade costs, a high‐cost country's optimal policy may be to ban international mergers.     

Trade and Industrial Policies with Heterogeneous Firms: The Role of Country Asymmetries

This paper explores the role of country asymmetries for trade and industrial policies with heterogeneous firms. The analysis delivers a number of novel results. First, trade policies, infrastructure policies and industrial policies which improve the business conditions in one country have negative productivity and welfare effects on the trading partner. Second, symmetric trade liberalization is immiserizing for a trading partner whose business conditions are inferior. Third, there are gains from trade even for a country whose monopolistically competitive sector with heterogeneous firms is wiped out by switching from autarky to trade.     

The Interaction Between Technology Adoption and Trade When Firms are Heterogeneous

This paper develops a monopolistic competition model with heterogeneous firms to study the interaction between technology adoption and trade in a world of two countries facing different technology adoption costs. It shows that a reduction in the technology adoption cost in one country increases productivity, induces more firms to adopt advanced technology, and improves welfare in this country, while decreasing productivity, inducing more firms to switch back to old technology, and reducing welfare in the other country. Furthermore, although a reduction in transport costs always makes the country with the lower adoption cost better off, it can hurt the other country.     

Trade Liberalization in Egypt

A computable general equilibrium model of Egypt is developed to analyze proposed reforms in its trade policies, including a partnership agreement with the European Union. The model has multiple trading regions and allows for administrative trade barriers and tariffs. The paper reports computations of the revenue impacts of trade liberalization and the required changes in distortionary commodity taxes to maintain a fixed real government budget. Egypt's greatest potential gains come from removing its administrative trade barriers while adopting globally free trade. The partnership agreement with the EU could lower or raise Egypt's welfare, depending on prior trade reform.     

International Organization of Production with Heterogeneous Firms

This paper presents a North–South model with differentiated goods being produced in the North. Each differentiated final good requires both management and manufacturing services as inputs, and firms are heterogeneous with regard to their productivity levels in providing these inputs. Two scenarios of relocating manufacturing to the South, which are interpreted to correspond to vertical foreign direct investment (FDI) and offshoring, are investigated. In both cases there is a minimum level of management productivity required for firms to benefit from relocation of manufacturing to the South. In the case of offshoring, productivity and profit gains are relatively larger for firms with low initial manufacturing productivity. Firms with high initial productivity in both aspects choose not to offshore owing to the presence of fixed costs. The model is subsequently used to examine the implications of global economic integration on the type of firm that exits an industry, changes production location or keeps manufacturing domestically.     

Trade Liberalization and Technology Choice

This paper considers the links between trade liberalization and technology choice in the nonliberalizing country. Trade‐liberalization‐induced changes in relative product prices have direct effects on equilibrium relative factor returns. The consequent changes in relative input costs may also lead producers to switch to alternative technologies, which will in turn induce a further indirect change in relative factor returns. Will this indirect affect exacerbate or ameliorate the direct effect on relative factor returns? It is found that this depends on the relative cost savings across sectors and factor cost shares.     

Trade Liberalization and Technology Diffusion

The paper considers the role of technology diffusion and trade liberalization for the catching‐up of structurally backward countries. A New Economic Geography model is presented that accounts for firm entry/exit and international mobility of skilled labor employed in public R&D sectors. This raises the traditional agglomeration effects in a core–periphery setting as firms and mobile factors usually cluster within spatial agglomerations. With international technology diffusion, however, there is a counteracting effect on the traditional agglomeration effects as firms in the periphery also benefit from increasing R&D expenditures in the core lowering entry costs for firms. It is found that the catching‐up of structurally backward countries is spurred not only as a result of trade integration but also because of technology diffusion.     

Why Environmentalists Resist Trade Liberalization

We build a two-country differential game model of polluting oligopoly to consider the effects of trade liberalization. As in static models, the opening of trade promotes competition but expands global pollution. Characterizing open-loop and feedback strategies, we derive a sufficient condition for losses from trade. This losses-from-trade proposition could provide a rationale for persistent resistance to globalization by environmentalists.     

Child Labour and Trade Liberalization

The paper analyses the implications of trade liberalization on the incidence of child labour in a two-sector general equilibrium framework. The supply function of child labour has been derived from the utility-maximizing behaviour of the working families. The paper finds that the effect of trade liberalization on the incidence of child labour crucially hinges on the relative factor intensities of the two sectors.     

Regionalism and Multilateral Trade Liberalization with Asymmetric Countries

The paper examines the impact of regionalism on the process of multilateral trade liberalization when countries are asymmetric. The author uses a three‐country, three‐good, competing exporters model, with countries being symmetric in everything but their discount factors. The equilibrium regional agreement is found to be a customs union between a patient and an impatient country and that the impact of regionalism depends on the discount factors. The impact of regionalism on multilateral trade liberalization depends critically on which countries engage in regionalism.     

Revenue Motives and Trade Liberalization

Governments in more-developed economies partially compensate import-competing industries when world prices fall, i.e., they lean against the wind. Less-developed economies often liberalize in response to the same shock. We use a political-support maximization model with revenue motives to derive conditions under which a rational policymaker would respond to lower woild prices by reducing tariff protection for an import-competing industry. An initial tariff that exceeds the maximum revenue level proves necessary but not sufficient for politically optimal liberalization following a fall in the world price of the importable good.     

Trade Liberalization and Cartel Stability

Can reduced trade barriers promote a collusive understanding about not exporting into each others domestic markets? Reduced trade costs increase the short‐run gains from starting exporting, but can also make the long‐run punishment of such a strategy harsher. If collusion on prices is supported by a trigger strategy, a reduction in trade costs weakens competition in the sense that collusion is easier to sustain. In a corresponding model with collusion on quantities, this conclusion is reversed. The authors also discuss how results change if grim trigger strategies are replaced by stick‐and‐carrot punishments.