Trading activities,productivity and markups: Evidence for Spanish manufacturing

This work analyses the firms' internationalisation strategies of importing intermediates and exporting output, and the potential rewards of these activities in terms of total factor productivity (TFP), as a proxy for marginal costs, and markups. It further deepens into the study of the relationship between internationalisation strategies and markups by disentangling whether it operates through affecting firms' marginal costs and/or firms' prices. The panel database employed in this paper is the Spanish Survey on Business Strategies (ESEE) for the period 2006–14. Results in the paper distinguish between SMEs and large firms and indicate that there is high persistence in the performance of these activities and in firms' TFP and markups. For SMEs, we obtain rewards from importing inputs as well as exporting output in terms of TFP and markups. For large firms, we obtain rewards in TFP from the importing activity and rewards in markups from the exporting activity. Finally, we find evidence that the effects of internationalisation strategies on markups are due to both a price channel and a marginal cost channel.     

服务业对外开放、人民币实际汇率和出口企业加成率

本文通过将服务要素和汇率波动引入拓展的MO理论模型,并使用2001—2013年中国工业企业数据库和中国海关数据库匹配的样本研究了服务业对外开放对出口企业加成率的影响。研究结果表明:服务业对外开放显著提升了出口企业加成率,但人民币升值减弱了服务业开放的正面影响,该结论在经过工具变量法、替换变量等一系列稳健性检验后依然成立;服务业对外开放对技术密集型企业、非垄断企业、加工和非加工贸易企业加成率的提升作用明显,但随着人民币升值该促进作用逐渐减弱;服务业对外开放通过提升产品质量促进出口企业加成率,人民币升值通过价格效应抑制出口企业加成率;服务业对外开放和人民币升值均显著降低了加成率离散程度,优化了资源配置;服务业对外开放通过资源再配置效应提升了行业加成率。     

Exports and Property Prices in France: Are They Connected?

France has seen a marked deterioration in its export performance in the last 10 years or so. Previous empirical research pointed out that weak export performance was due to (i) vigorous domestic demand, (ii) lower markups due to head‐to‐head competition with Germany, (iii) low non‐price competitiveness of French export goods, (iv) offshoring of entire production processes (especially in the automobile sector), and (v) difficulties of French manufacturing firms to reach critical size for exporting. This paper adds an additional explanation to this list. We argue that resource reallocation from the exporting to the construction sector triggered by fast rising property prices hindered France to meet world export demand vis‐à‐vis its products. Our econometric analysis shows that the resource reallocation argument helps explain French export performance between the early 2000s and 2007, unexplained by traditional models. This result is confirmed for a set of OECD countries that experienced a marked decline in their export performance and sustained real estate boom after 2000.     

中国出口跨越了“低加成率陷阱”吗

本文以出口企业"低加成率陷阱"为切入点,运用间接可加性效用函数探究了出口企业加成率决定方程。在此基础上,本文使用最新的中国工业企业数据和中国海关数据对理论命题进行了实证检验,结果表明:全样本出口企业加成率显著低于非出口企业,但是在2011—2013年总体上出口企业加成率已经超过非出口企业;企业生产率、出口目的地人均GDP、双边实际直接汇率和出口产品质量均显著正向影响出口企业加成率,而出口平均关税率存在明显负向作用;子样本检验结果表明,劳动密集型行业和加工贸易的出口目的地收入效应较小。本文首次证实中国出口企业已经跨越了"低加成率陷阱",并提供了提升贸易竞争力的政策建议。     

Increasing market power in Slovenia: Role of diverging trends between exporters and non-exporters

This paper documents the evolution of markups in a small open economy, Slovenia, using a comprehensive data set covering the full population of firms. It makes three novel contributions to the literature. First, in contrast to other work for Europe, we find that markups have increased from 1.05 to 1.19 between 1994 and 2015. Second, while other research so far found exporters typically to have higher markups, we find the opposite in Slovenia. Though the rise in markups occurs both with exporters and non-exporters, there is a consistent diverging trend in markups in favour of non-exporters since 1999. This can be attributed to increased competitive pressure faced by exporters following the comprehensive trade liberalisation after 1999 and their increased participation in global value chains. Third, we decompose aggregate markups and show that the increase in markups, for both exporters and non-exporters, is mainly driven by the within component rather than the reallocation effect. This suggests that all firms were increasing their markups, rather than high-markup firms increasing their market share over time.     

Input trade liberalisation,institution and markup: Evidence from China's accession to the WTO

This paper investigates the effects of input trade liberalisation on firm markups and assesses how institutional environment affects such impacts by using Chinese firm‐level data. To identify the causal effects, we exploit the quasi‐natural experiment of China's WTO accession in 2001 and perform difference‐in‐differences estimation. The results show that input tariff liberalisation leads to a substantial increase in firm markups, and institutional environment significantly strengthens such an impact. We further uncover the underlying mechanisms through which input tariff liberalisation boosts firm markups, and show that both price and cost channels work for the input tariff cut effect on firm markups, of which the latter is much more important. In addition, we also demonstrate that input tariff cut significantly fosters aggregate markup growth, and the reallocation effect is found to be an important channel through which input tariff liberalisation boosts aggregate markup growth.     

Impact of personalization and privacy concerns on information disclosure and pricing

Advances in IT have enabled some firms to offer personalized products according to the private information disclosed by consumers, while others are still offering standardized products, which brings about asymmetric competition. For consumers, disclosing private information for personalized products leads to reduced misfit cost as well as privacy loss. To illuminate the impact of consumers' trade-off between the benefit of information disclosure and the associated privacy concerns on firms' asymmetric price competition, we consider a setting where only one firm is capable of product personalization based on consumers' personal information. The capable firm makes a profit from selling the product and monetizing consumers' information. We demonstrate that as the capable firm becomes more adept at personalization, he may raise or lower the price depending on his profit foci, and an improvement in his capability does not always guarantee a higher profit. Counterintuitively, an increase in the unit misfit cost (i.e., greater product differentiation) can, under certain circumstances, intensity price competition, making both firms worse off and leading to higher consumer surplus. We also show that when consumers are more privacy-concerned, there exists an indirect effect that weakens the impact of an increase in price on the monetization of consumers’ information, and hence price competition can be mitigated and both firms can be better off. Furthermore, we demonstrate that product personalization with misfit-reducing effect always increases consumer surplus under the asymmetric competition. Our findings provide firms and policy-makers with great managerial insights.     

The DNA of the domestic value added (DVA) in exports: Firm‐level analysis of DVA in exports

This paper sheds light on the relationship between domestic value added in exports (DVA) and the different ways firms participate in GVCs by exploiting a detailed firm‐level data set for the whole population of Slovenian exporting firms for the period 2002–14. The paper draws attention to those firm characteristics that allow a greater share of DVA to be captured. Although reliance on industry‐level data from input–output tables is the most common way of doing this in the literature, this paper develops a method for estimating DVA in exports using firm‐level data by adapting the approach taken by Kee and Tang (2016). The paper finds that in terms of DVA, domestic‐owned exporting firms outperform more productive foreign‐owned firms and that firms not affiliated with permanent suppliers from abroad capture higher DVA in exports. Positive outcomes of DVA in exports can be observed, all else being equal, for firms with a larger share of intangible capital per worker and firms with a smaller share of exports based on imports of the same products. The results also show that when exporting more to less demanding markets, like the countries of former Yugoslavia, firms benefit more in terms of greater DVA gains in exports.     

房价上涨如何影响工业企业加成率：事实与机制

将“担保效应”和“挤出效应”纳入同一框架解释房价上涨对工业企业加成率的影响机制。在此基础上，根据中国工业企业数据对理论命题进行实证,研究结果为：总体上，房价上涨显著降低了中国工业企业加成率；分样本回归显示，民营、一线和热点二线城市、东部地区和资本密集型企业受房价上涨的负向“加成率效应”较强；作用渠道检验证实中国工业企业在房价上涨时整体上“担保效应”和“挤出效应”不显著，但企业出口产品质量和生产率显著下降，从价格和成本渠道分别降低了企业加成率；与房地产行业相关性和地区市场化指数显著影响企业的负向“加成率效应”。结论对“去库存”和提升工业企业竞争力政策协调具有参考意义。     

进口竞争与多产品企业出口二元边际

运用2000~2006年中国工业数据库和海关数据库的匹配面板数据,本文研究了进口竞争与多产品企业出口二元边际的关系。研究发现:(1)进口竞争显著提高了多产品企业出口的集约边际和扩展边际,且对集约边际的促进作用更强;(2)区分贸易类型的研究发现,相比于一般贸易,进口竞争对加工贸易的边际促进效应更加显著;(3)分行业回归的结果表明,具有比较优势的行业,进口竞争对出口边际的促进效应更为显著。使用系统GMM模型控制可能存在的内生性,发现进口竞争对集约边际和扩展边际的促进作用依然稳健。     

Foreign Market Competition as a Determinant of Exporter Performance: Evidence from Slovenian Manufacturing Firms

Most studies on the link between exporting status and firm productivity find no evidence of learning‐by‐exporting, whereas self‐selection of more productive firms into exporting is most often confirmed. Furthermore, empirical tests of the learning‐by‐exporting hypothesis rarely rely on a specific learning mechanism and instead estimate very general tests of the effects of exporting on improvements of firm efficiency. Lack of explicit controls for specific learning mechanisms in turn biases the empirical estimates against finding the learning effects. Here I undertake a more targeted approach to learning‐by‐exporting by using data on Slovenian manufacturing enterprises between 1994 and 2002 to explore a specific channel for learning in the export markets. Using a variety of empirical tests, I show that competition in exporting markets serves as an added criterion in firm self‐selection as only the most productive and fastest growing firms choose to enter more competitive foreign markets. Once home‐market competition is explicitly controlled, a significant productivity adjustment effect of exporting firms in response to intensification of export market competition is revealed. Crucially, this provides tentative evidence of learning‐by‐exporting, which has so far been elusive in the relevant literature.     

How do firms finance their exports? – evidence from China

Using a firm-level production data over the period of 2005–2009 from China, this paper provides a new empirical evidence on how firms finance their exports when they have several financial options. The main results of the paper can be summarized as follows. First, firms who have better access to any finance are more likely to export and export more. More financial options lead to a higher export probability and capacity due to the complementary relation between financial options. Second, of all financial options, the internal finance captured by cash holdings or profit plays the most important role on firms’ export likelihood and volume. Firms rely more on the external finance through borrowing to start exporting, but depend more on issuing stocks to their shareholders to expand their exports. Third, subsample results suggest that the financial option of issuing stocks is generally more important for firms who have worse access to external finance in determining export propensity and quantity, such as private-owned firms, small-scale firms, young firms, and non-eastern firms.     

Markups,Bargaining Power and Offshoring: An Empirical Assessment1

This paper tests the pro‐competitive effect of imports on product and labour markets for Spanish manufacturing firms in the period 1990–2005. In doing so, it takes into account the type of imported products: final versus intermediate. Markups are estimated following the procedure suggested by Roeger and including an efficient bargaining model. The observed heterogeneity among firms is parametised to consider additional product standardisation and market concentration. The results support the imports as market discipline hypothesis for importers of final goods, while firms that offshore intermediate inputs show similar markups to nonimporters. Additionally, the union bargaining power is smaller for importers and the more homogeneous is the type of goods elaborated by firms.     

Early international entrepreneurship in China: Extent and determinants

We use data on 3,948 Chinese firms obtained from the World Bank’s Investment Climate Private Enterprise Survey to investigate early international entrepreneurship (international new ventures) in China. The extent of early international entrepreneurship in China is significant: 62% of the exporting firms start export operations within 3 years. Foreign shareholders within the firm and an entrepreneur with previous exporting experience are noted to significantly increase the probability that a firm internationalizes early. We find marked differences in the behaviour of indigenous and foreign-invested firms, and between direct and indirect exporters. For example, for an indigenous firm the more foreign experience its entrepreneur has, the less likely it is to start exporting early. As far as indirect exporting is concerned, business networks are significant determinants of the extent of such exporting, but delays the internationalization process of indigenous firms. The more firms in China export, the more time their managers need to spend on government regulations, although perhaps counter-intuitively, this was not found to discourage exporting. Overall, the findings suggest that exporting by indigenous Chinese firms is often due to challenging or adverse domestic conditions.     

Information and Disclosure in Strategic Trade Policy: Revisited

In a recent paper, Creane and Miyagiwa (J Int Econ 75:229–244, 2008) show that the mode of competition determines whether information sharing occurs between firms and governments within an international duopoly context in which the firms are located in different countries. In this paper, we show that when a price instrument is implemented to control exports, then the relative number of firms located in each country is also critical. In particular, we illustrate that with quantity competition and under the presence of demand and cost uncertainty, information sharing does not occur when the number of firms in one country is higher than the number of firms in the other country and vice-versa. However, when direct quantity controls are implemented the number of firms is irrelevant and information sharing always occurs. Moreover, we show that the informational prisoner’s dilemma restricts only to the case where subsidies are implemented in both countries when the number of firms across countries is equal.     

Strategic Trade Policies Under Monopsony and Uncertainty: The Exporter’s Non-Linear Responses Based on the Organization of Its Industry

Players’ access to information, their market power, and the timing and rationale of their decisions are important but often neglected in the making of strategic trade policies. I examine optimal decisions in a monopsonistic market with asymmetric information to determine an exporting country’s policy strategies. The large importing country first sets a producer subsidy and later imposes an import tariff after learning about the welfare-maximizing exporter’s reactions to the subsidy. I assume that at the time of their decisions, the n exporting firms have incomplete information and rely only on noisy signals from their own domestic market to account for the uncertainty in the international market. I find that import tariff and producer subsidy can be substitute rather than exclusively independent policies. Results also show that the exporting country’s optimal reaction is non-linear and is based on the structure of its export industry; the exporting country’s government facing a large importer subsidizes (or taxes) its export when the number of exporting firms is low (or high) relative to a threshold number of firms. More important, before giving out subsidies, the exporting country’s government requires more collusion of its firms especially when the large importer targets a fixed domestic price.     

供应链管理视角下的企业预付款融资采纳研究

文章结合供应链管理理论及营运资金管理理论,从供应链管理运作管理的视角出发,深入分析影响企业采纳预付款融资的因素。基于来自全国717个企业的供应链金融调查数据,文章利用对二分类因变量进行回归建模的Logistic回归模型,对企业采纳预付款融资的发生概率进行拟合。研究结果表明,从融资企业资金需求的角度,供应商提供原材料的平均交付周期越长、企业所采购物料的价格波动越大,越倾向于采纳预付款融资来解决资金问题,维持企业正常运营。结合金融机构信用风险控制的考虑,相对于原材料价格波动小的企业,所在供应链信息化程度高对帮助原材料价格波动大的企业获得金融机构授信的作用更显著。同时,文章认为出于确保还款资金来源的考虑,金融机构更倾向于向原材料库存平均周转天数短的企业授信;由于融资企业引入外部金融机构资金带来了额外的融资成本,会激励企业更努力做好其原材料库存管理,缩短原材料库存平均周转天数,尽早预付款融资,降低融资成本。     

Why Have U.S. Prices Become Independent of Business Cycles?

This article analyzes the issue of price cyclicality from a Post Keynesian perspective. It shows that there are two key factors at the center of the mechanism for the sudden U.S. transition from counter‐cyclical to a‐cyclical price movement in the early 1980s. First, the cost pass‐through policy has been changed to ensure that the cyclical changes of input prices and/or labor productivity are absorbed more thoroughly and are thus reflected more frequently in profit markups than occurred prior to 1984. This relatively increased adaptability of the profit markups in the aggregate sense between the pricing periods cushions the direct effect of cyclical changes in the cost base on price cyclicality. Second, a structural change in the U.S. labor productivity's cyclical property has generated cost‐base stability during the post‐1984 period. Declines in hiring and firing costs and cutbacks in social security benefits have led the labor discipline effect to dominate the labor hoarding effect. This has allowed labor productivity to increase as the unemployment rate rises; thus, the cost base cyclicality has weakened, and prices have become less cyclical since 1984.     

人力资本匹配如何影响企业加成率:理论机制与经验证据

本文在拓展M-O模型的基础上,构建“人力资本-产业结构”匹配程度和匹配质量对企业加成率影响效应的理论框架,并利用中国城市统计数据和微观企业数据进行了经验研究。主要结论如下:城市人力资本发展滞后于产业结构调整,呈现“人力资本-产业结构”低质量耦合锁定趋势;“人力资本-产业结构”系统耦合度与企业加成率之间存在显著的“倒U型”关系,而系统协调度与企业加成率之间存在显著的“U型”关系。中间机制检验结果表明,耦合度产生的加成率效应主要通过“工资渠道”,而协调度会影响企业的“创新行为”。随着城市人力资本匹配质量提高,促进企业人力资本和研发创新协调投入会显著提升企业加成率。进一步分析发现,人力资本匹配与行业技能密集度相协调、与行业技术水平相匹配、与比较优势动态升级相结合、与企业自主升级行为区间互补,能让企业破除人力资本低质量耦合锁定而提高加成率。本文的结论对发挥人力资本质量外溢和技术进步效应推动制造业高质量发展具有重要现实意义。