Anglo‐American trade costs during the first era of globalization: the contribution of a bilateral tariff series†

Previous scholarship has suggested that British trade was generally unaffected by foreign tariffs during the period from 1870 to 1913. This article focuses specifically on Anglo‐American trade, which was the largest bilateral flow of trade during the first era of globalization, and finds that tariffs were the sole intertemporal determinant of Anglo‐American trade costs. However, the determinacy of tariffs for Anglo‐American trade costs only becomes apparent when the tariff variable incorporates a measure of the bilateral American tariff toward Britain, which this article reconstructs. The article concludes by claiming that Anglo‐American trade represents a major qualification to any emerging consensus that foreign tariffs were of minor significance to the trade of late nineteenth‐century Britain.     

重叠需求、能源禀赋与双边贸易成本——基于上海合作组织的经验分析

本文在改进的引力模型框架下,测算了1992～2009年中国与上海合作组织其他成员国以及土库曼斯坦的双边贸易成本,并基于重叠需求的视角经验分析贸易成本的影响因素。实证结果表明,贸易模式对双边贸易成本的影响较为显著,重叠需求引发的产业间贸易和要素禀赋差异引致的产业内贸易对贸易成本具有不同的作用机制,中国加入WTO、国际金融危机的爆发以及拥有共同边界有利于降低双边贸易成本。最后,本文还为加强上海合作组织的经济作用、深化成员国的贸易合作提出了政策建议。     

中国对外双边贸易成本的测度研究——以亚洲贸易伙伴为例

基于Novy(2006)提出的具备微观基础的引力模型,本文综合测度了中国与亚洲主要贸易伙伴的双边贸易成本。结果表明,中国与这些国家(地区)的贸易成本自上世纪80年代以来出现了不同程度的下降趋势。与此同时,我们还考察了贸易成本的下降对中国与亚洲国家(地区)双边贸易的增长效应,对我们样本中的大多数国家(地区)而言,贸易成本下降对双边贸易增长的贡献率相对要大于经济增长的贡献率。通过实证研究我们进一步探讨了双边贸易成本的决定因素和条件趋同性,最后揭示了本文研究的政策性涵义。     

Autarky in Franco's Spain: The costs of a closed economy

Between the 1940s and 1970s, Spain used a variety of economic policies that hindered international trade. Because the mix of tariffs, quotas, administrative barriers, and exchange rate regimes varied greatly over time, the quantification of the effect of the various trade policies on international trade in this period is particularly elusive. In this paper, we use historical bilateral trade flows and a structural gravity model to quantify the evolution of Spain's border thickness, a summary measure of its barriers to international trade. We find that Spain's borders in the period 1948–75 were thicker than those of any other country in Western Europe, even after the liberalization of trade that started in 1959. These comparatively higher impediments to international trade implied substantial negative effects on consumer welfare. We estimate that accumulated welfare costs over the period 1948–75 exceed 20 per cent of a year's total consumption.     

中国对外贸易成本的分解及其对出口的影响——基于随机前沿引力模型

本文运用随机前沿引力模型,测度了2001年和2007年中国与94个国家和地区的双边贸易成本,并按照贸易成本的构成对中国在两个时期间的出口增长进行了分解。结果表明,中国的出口增长主要来自于显性和隐性跨境贸易成本的减少以及贸易伙伴国需求的增加。在2001～2007年期间,边境内成本的变化导致中国对欧盟、美国、日本三大贸易伙伴出口损失的减少,而由该成本变化带来的出口损失增加的大部分来自印度和巴西。另一方面,由于隐性跨境成本的约束,中国对于严格遵循TBT和SPS政策的一些高收入或中等收入国家的出口潜力减少了。     

Geography,policy, or productivity? Regional trade in five South American countries, 1910–50

Regional trade in South America since independence has long been much smaller than would be expected if geography were the only constraint on trade. Several potential explanations exist, including low technological and demand complementarities; low productivity; and high natural and policy barriers to trade. Focusing on the latter explanations, policy makers have long advocated a South American/Southern Cone Free Trade Area—proposed as early as 1889. Would reductions in trade costs have been sufficient to raise trade significantly, or was trade low for other reasons? We study bilateral trade between 1910 and 1950, when large external shocks altered global supply and demand. These shocks help us show that intra‐regional trade could have been boosted by reductions in trade costs. Trade among Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and Peru could have benefited from more benign trade policies or better infrastructure. Regional trade in textiles, which took off from the 1930s, supports our argument that trade improved when trade costs fell.     

Why do trade costs vary?

As tariffs have fallen, it is apparent that trade costs are a significant obstacle to international trade and that they vary from country to country. The gap between the cif and fob value of a trade flow is a useful measure of aggregate trade costs, but only if the measure is based on a consistent volume of trade; mirror statistics are unsuitable. Using high quality Australian import data disaggregated at the HS 6-digit level, we find large country-by-country variations in trade costs. Distance, weight and size account for part of the variation in trade costs. Indicators of institutional quality pick up some of the variation in trade costs, but the relationship is not uniform across mode of transport and commodities; exporting countries’ institutional quality is more strongly related to trade costs for air freight than sea freight, and the relationship is commodity-specific and strongest for manufactured goods. Country-specific characteristics influencing trade costs provide a link between institutions and economic development.     

Bilateral Trade, Openness, and Asset Holdings

This paper analyzes the relationship between bilateral trade flows, trade openness, and asset holdings in a three-country stochastic general equilibrium model. The three-country model set-up enables me to disentangle the effects of bilateral trade flows and trade openness on bilateral portfolio patterns. I find that both factors independently influence bilateral asset holdings. Higher bilateral trade as well as higher trade openness lead to a higher bilateral foreign asset position. Furthermore, the model shows an interaction effect between these two factors, where increasing trade openness reduces the influence of bilateral trade flows on asset holdings. I provide supporting empirical evidence for these theoretical findings using a data set on the geographical composition of international portfolio holdings.     

生产分割、周期协同与主要贸易伙伴的关联:1995～2008年

利用中国与17个主要贸易伙伴国1995～2008年的投入产出表和分行业双边进出口贸易数据,测算不同时期的双边生产分割程度。然后基于动态面板数据模型,综合分析了影响国际经济周期协同的决定性因素。研究发现,贸易在影响中国与主要贸易伙伴国的国际经济周期协同中存在两种不同方向的作用机制:以双边生产分割程度度量的互补品贸易对经济周期协同存在正向影响,而以双边贸易强度指标度量的替代品贸易对经济周期协同存在负向影响。同时研究还表明,双边金融整合程度对国际经济周期协同有正向影响,而产业结构相似性对国际经济周期协同的影响并不显著。     

The Gravity Equation in International Trade in Services

The main purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of various factors on bilateral services trade, relative to that on bilateral goods trade. To accomplish this purpose, using the standard gravity model, we ran regressions on bilateral services trade and goods trade between 10 OECD member countries and other economies (including OECD member and nonmember countries) for the years 1999 and 2000. One main and interesting result is that services trade is better predicted by gravity equations than goods trade. Another interesting result is that there is a complementary relationship between goods exports and services imports. JEL no. F10, F20, L51, F80     

An examination of minimum tick sizes on the Tokyo Stock Exchange

In setting a minimum tick size, exchanges balance the competing objectives of lowering transaction costs and encouraging liquidity provision by minimizing stepping-ahead risk. We examine the trade-off between these two types of costs by examining the proportion of time that the quoted spread equals the minimum tick size (PTIMEMIN). We undertake this analysis on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, a market that sets nine different tick sizes based on stock price. PTIMEMIN varies markedly across stocks, ranging from almost 0 to almost 100 percent. We find that trade size, the number of trades, and price are the most important determinants of whether the minimum tick size is a binding constraint. In fact, trade size and number of trades are more significant determinants of tick size constraint than price. Consequently, we argue that tick size should be set based on trading activity and price, rather than price alone.     

Impact of trade cost on China-EU agri-food trade

In this research, we investigate trade costs in relation to China-EU trade in agri-food products during 2001–2015. Major components of trade cost include transportation costs, border-related policy barriers such as tariffs, and local distribution costs. Our results indicate that trade costs between China and EU involving agri-food products, although falling, remain abnormally high. Consequently, we find that trade cost reductions contribute to over half of the overall China-EU trade growth. Our decomposition technique demonstrates that economic growth and trade cost reductions are the key drivers of China-EU trade expansion. Implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) would reduce high trade costs to increase EU-China bilateral agricultural trade significantly. This is not fully captured in the gravity models where a static distance is usually used as a proxy to trade cost. The BRI will not reduce the distance, but it will cut transportation and other components of trade cost for China-EU trade.     

全球价值链分工下的双边贸易收益核算：以中美贸易为例

通过构建双边贸易收益核算模型,从总体规模、行业结构、实现方式等层面对中美双边贸易收益进行核算。本文发现中美双边出口中均包含着大量的对方国内增加值,与增加值贸易差额比较,传统统计口径的中美贸易差额出现明显高估。其中中国对美货物出口的贸易顺差被显著高估,而服务出口的贸易顺差被明显低估。在中美双边贸易中,中国对美出口包含的本国国内增加值比重不到七成,而美国对华出口包含的本国国内增加值比重超过八成。中国出口到美国的产品绝大部分表现为最终产品并且被美国当地消费,而美国出口到中国很大部分表现为中间品,并且通过对增值折返及对第三国出口的形式实现。     

Does Immigration Help to Explain Intra-Industry Trade? Evidence for Spain

This paper argues and provides evidence that the stock of immigrants in a country has a positive effect on the share of its bilateral intra-industry trade (IIT). The paper links the literatures about immigration and trade and about IIT determinants. The key is that immigration contributes to trade transaction costs reduction and this would benefit the trade in differentiated products, i.e. IIT, more than the trade in homogeneous products, i.e. inter-industry trade. We test this hypothesis using Spanish data and departing from the models developed by Helpman. Results are robust to different IIT measures, estimation methods and specifications. JEL no. F10, F22, F14     

中国进出口双边贸易成本测度方法比较研究

目前测度贸易成本广为应用的Novy方法存在实践性缺陷,本文直接基于Andersen多边一般均衡微观需求建模思路,重构可行的出口贸易成本测度方程,并以中国经验数据为例证与原有方法进行了对比分析。结果表明,两种方法存在稳健的测度差异,很有必要认真探讨。近年来中国与主要贸易伙伴双边贸易成本整体加速下降,亚太地区及北方邻国贸易成本明显小于其他地区。     

Disentangling the impact of infrastructure on trade using a new index of infrastructure

Making use of considerably improved measures of infrastructure, the study assesses the impact of infrastructure on bilateral trade for a panel of 150 developed and emerging economies during the period 1992–2011. The authors make use of a gravity approach to disentangle the impact of infrastructure on trade and trade costs. Improving infrastructure endowments and quality decreases trade costs and increases international trade flows. Countries with improved infrastructure reduce not only bilateral trade costs but also multilateral trade costs. The decomposition of effects indicates that better infrastructure encourages higher export flows relative to domestic trade flows. Main results of the study prove to be robust, also when considering distinct trade categories (consumption goods, intermediates, and capital goods) for a smaller sample.     

Determinants of bilateral trade: evidence from ASEAN+3

In this research, we investigate the determinants of international trade, employing a dataset of bilateral trade and economics characteristics in the ASEAN+3 countries. We include a large number of independent variables that potentially drive international trade. We also use various standard gravity model variables to maintain consistency with the current literature. The results provide some important insights into the determinants of bilateral trade and offer policy implications regarding the promotion of international trade for governments worldwide. In particular, we find that output asymmetry between countries positively explains bilateral trade. Moreover, the findings suggest that making use of comparative advantage by differentiating the export product structure is important in promoting international trade. We do not find a consistent impact from bilateral exchange rate volatility on bilateral trade. This result points to the importance of providing opportunities for the hedging of currency uncertainty to avoid its adverse effects on trade. The results for other standard gravity model variables are consistent with the results of previous theoretical and empirical research.     

引力模型在中国与东盟贸易中的实证分析

本文将引力模型运用到中国与东盟贸易的定量分析中，利用2000-2004年的面板数据建立了包括GDP、人均GDP和距离等基本变量的基本引力模型，在此基础上增加了华人人口、通用华语等变量，得到了扩展的引力模型。然后运用得到的模型来评价中国与东盟的贸易潜力，最后运用模型预测出2006年中国与东盟各国贸易额的增长率。     

International Trade, OECD Membership, and Religion

Transaction costs in trade gravity equation are proxied by the distance that separates two trading partners, under the assumption that the distance elasticity is the same across all trading partners. We show that distance elasticity, however, critically depends on whether trading partners are industrial countries (i.e., members of the OECD) or share same religion. These heterogeneities are both statistically and economically significant. For instance, expected trade flows are the largest when an OECD member trades with a non-member and both are non-religious. Expected trade flows fall as much as by 62.9% between two non-religious, non-OECD members. Expected bilateral trade drops by 48.1% when both countries in the pair are OECD members while one is Christian and the other is Islamic. Both religion and OECD membership significantly affect the typical transaction costs implied by the gravity equation. JEL Classification Number: F13     

关于云南与南亚贸易的实证分析

本文分析了云南与南亚贸易的现状及影响双边贸易的因素。分析结果显示GDP总量、人口总数、收入水平对云南与南亚贸易存在正的效应,国土面积、距离则存在负效应。根据分析结果提出了进一步扩大云南与南亚贸易的策略。