Foreign demand shocks,product switching,and export product quality: Evidence from China

Using Chinese customs data spanning from 2000 to 2013, we explore how foreign demand shocks in exporting markets impact product switching, factor adjustments, and export quality of Chinese exporting firms. We document that positive demand shocks would render firms to expand product scope by increasing the number of added varieties and decreasing the number of dropped varieties. In line with the expansion of product scope, firms adjust their factor reallocations by hiring more employees and producing in a more capital-intensive way when facing higher positive demand shocks. Higher capital intensity induces productivity improvement, and thus increases firms' export revenue, export price, and export-product quality. We also document that positive foreign demand shocks render firms to concentrate less on their core varieties by skewing their export sales away from the best performing products.     

Distributive trade and regional productivity growth

The paper aims to investigate the relationship between distributive trade (wholesale and retail trade) and productivity growth across Italian provinces. In most studies, the potential determinants of productivity in the distributive trade have been investigated, while the impact of these activities on economic growth of the whole system has received less attention. By using panel data during the time period 2000–2013, the paper tests if the increase in the share of employees in distributive trade over the given period has promoted the productivity growth. This study applies both a random-effects model and, among the dynamic panel data estimators, a generalized method of moments estimator (GMM). In order to control both the issue of endogeneity, due to the presence of some potentially endogenous variables among the explanatory variables, and the problem of instrument proliferation, the GMM estimator is implemented together with a statistical method, which reduces the number of instruments when the set of endogenous variables is wide. The findings show that the distributive trade has a strong positive impact on the productivity growth. Moreover, this link is reinforced when we control the potential endogeneity. The results also support the idea that distributive trade can promote provincial convergence.     

Plant level evidence on product mix changes in Chilean manufacturing

This article analyzes changes in the product mix by Chilean manufacturing plants in the period 1996–2003. Three quarters of the surviving plants changed the set of products produced and more than three quarters of the exporting plants changed the mix of products they exported during the sample period. Plants that changed their product mix contributed 85% of the aggregate growth in real sales of surviving plants between 1996 and 2003. Finally, and in contrast to the US evidence, there is a negative correlation between revenue per product and the number of products. Apart from this, new evidence consistent with recent models of multi-product heterogeneous firms and trade is provided.     

Trade policy, trade volumes and plant-level productivity in Colombian manufacturing industries

This paper explores a period of substantial variation in trade policy across industries in Colombia (1977-1991) to examine whether increased exposure to foreign competition generates productivity gains for manufacturing plants. Using an estimation methodology that addresses the shortcomings of previous studies, we find a strong positive impact of tariff liberalization on plant productivity, even after controlling for plant and industry heterogeneity, real exchange rates, and cyclical effects. The impact of liberalization is stronger for larger plants and plants in less competitive industries. Our findings are not driven by the endogeneity of protection. Similar results are obtained when using effective rates of protection and import penetration ratios as measures of protection. Productivity gains under trade liberalization are linked to increases in intermediate inputs' imports, skill intensity, and machinery investments, and to output reallocations from less to more productive plants.     

The effect of credit on growth and convergence of firm size in Kenyan manufacturing

Few studies test for the effect of credit and convergence on firm growth in the context of a developing economy. The use of bank credit can affect firm growth in two opposite ways. The effect may be positive if credit allows a firm to address its liquidity constraint and increase investment and profitability. However, if macroeconomic shocks such as unexpected increases in interest rates make firm debts unsustainable, as experienced in Kenya in the 1990s, indebted firms may shrink or even collapse. Using microeconomic data on the Kenyan manufacturing sector, this study finds that conditional on survival, the firms that use credit grow faster than those not using it. There is also evidence that small firms grow faster than large ones, confirming the convergence hypothesis. These results are robust to alternative estimation procedures controlling for both endogeneity and selection bias.     

Economic integration,market discipline and productivity growth in Spain

This paper explores the changes on productivity growth, economies of scale and market discipline experienced by a selected number of Spanish manufacturing industries as a result of the 1986?–?92 integration of Spain into the European Union. Since the intra-union trade liberalization process spanned a seven-year, multi-stage, adhesion period we employ a model with a smooth transition variable to account fully for its impact. An additional model that uses separate sets of dummy variables captures differences in the regression estimates during the transitional and liberalized periods. In both model specifications we find strong evidence of increases in returns to scale and reductions in producers' mark-ups, whereas productivity growth increases are found to be small and uneven.     

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.     

Domestic regulation,import penetration and firm-level productivity growth

This paper shows that the impact of import penetration on firms’ productivity growth depends on firms’ distance to the efficiency frontier and on product market regulation. Using firm-level data for a substantial number of OECD countries from the late 1990s to late 2000s, the analysis reveals nonlinear effects of both sectoral import penetration and de jure product market regulation measures, depending on firms’ positions along the global distribution of productivity. Close to the technology frontier, import penetration has a strongly positive effect on firm-level productivity growth, with less stringent domestic regulation enhancing this effect substantially. However, far from the frontier, the effect of import penetration on firm-level productivity growth is much smaller and often not significant. Its interaction with domestic regulation generally has no statistically significant effect either. The heterogeneous effects of import penetration and domestic product market regulation on firm-level productivity growth are consistent with a neo-Schumpeterian view of trade and regulation.     

Global sourcing,productivity and export intensity

This paper investigates the effect of global sourcing on firm performances by using data on Danish manufacturing firms during the period 1995–2006. The results show that firms with better ex-ante characteristics are more inclined to source intermediate inputs from abroad. The results also show that firms that source from different locations possess different ex-ante characteristics; the most productive source inputs from high-wage countries while capital stock and being an exporter are more important factors when sourcing from low-wage countries. Moreover, controlling for the endogeneity of both the sourcing decision and location by using instrument variable and DiD matching approach, the results seem also to suggest that firms that source inputs from high-wage countries benefited from doing so in terms of higher growth of productivity and export intensity. Firms that source inputs from low-wage countries, on the other hand, seem not to have experienced any significant impact on neither productivity nor export, not even three years after they started to source inputs from these countries.     

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.     

服务贸易协定承诺的覆盖率对制造业增加值出口的影响

文章借助WTO与世界银行联合建立的Integrated Trade Intelligence Portal数据库构建服务贸易协定承诺的覆盖率指标,选取Trade in value-added数据库2005年至2015年27个国家(地区)制造业增加值出口的国内增加值和国外增加值数据,通过实证分析,得出结论:(1)服务贸易协定生效在短时间内对制造业国内增加值和国外增加值出口存在显著的促进效应,且随着生效年限增加,促进效应也在加强;(2)服务贸易协定承诺的覆盖率越高,对制造业增加值出口的促进作用越强。根据国家收入水平对服务贸易协定进行分类的异质性分析结果显示:(1)发达国家(地区)与其他国家(地区)签订服务贸易协定对其制造业增加值出口的提升没有显著正向影响,甚至表现出负面影响;(2)发展中国家(地区)之间签订的服务贸易协定能够在生效2年后显著促进发展中国家(地区)制造业国外增加值出口。     

我国服务贸易发展战略重点、 主要任务与政策建议

服务业开放度低和贸易逆差这两大问题严重制约了我国服务贸易的可持续发展。我国应推动实施服务贸易开放平衡战略,加快服务业开放,完善服务出口促进体系,扭转服务逆差扩大趋势,提升服务贸易国际竞争力。本文从开放地区布局、开放产业时序、开放路径、防范开放风险等方面提出了服务业开放的主要任务,从服务出口主体、服务出口方式、服务出口平台、服务出口市场等方面提出了扩大服务出口的主要任务,并从体制机制、促进政策和统计监测3个方面提出了政策建议。     

Trade liberalization and adjustment in Argentina

This paper looks at trade liberalization attempts in Argentina since 1970, with particular attention to the 1991?–?98 period, estimates the size of the adjustments required by the changes in the trade regimes, and looks at the degree of adjustment attained as manifested by the real effective exchange rate.     

Similarity and Competition in the Agri-Food Trade among European Mediterranean Countries

ABSTRACT

Using Eurostat and OECD data on agri-food exports, this article provides a picture of the evolution in the similarity between Italian and other European Mediterranean countries’ exports, before and after the recent financial crisis. Considering different indexes, the similarity is somewhat moderate and does not vary noticeably among the indexes when considering the EU-25 market. By contrast, a strong qualitative dissimilarity is recorded in the North American market. Overall, France and Spain appear more similar to Italy and likely to compete in the same agri-food market segments. The crisis seems associated to a slight modification of the exports structure.     

出口补贴、运输成本与贸易模式——对传统分析的矫正和扩展

文章试图矫正传统分析中未考虑买卖价差导致的进口竞争的疏漏和不足并予以扩展。相较于传统分析,推行出口补贴的出口国福利损失更小,同时还诱致产生了相同产品的产业内贸易现象。通过引入运输成本因素的分析表明,在出口补贴政策激励下,运输成本的大小将决定相应的贸易模式、贸易量和福利结果。随着运输成本的降低,贸易模式将从单向出口向产业内贸易演变,这时运输成本的耗费成为福利损失的最重要来源之一。基于出口国内非均质运输成本的研究发现,较高的国内运输成本使不同类企业的市场相分割,还使得出口补贴的分配呈现有偏性。如果国内运输成本下降,将形成低效率的产业内贸易现象,导致大量的运输成本耗费。     

Trade,growth and wage inequality in Bangladesh

Abstract

Using model selection techniques based on out-of-sample predictive ability criterion in a Vector Autoregression (VAR) framework, this paper empirically examines the causal relations among growth, trade, and wage inequality in Bangladesh between 1971 and 2000. There is some evidence of bi-directional causality between growth and inequality and between trade and growth. That growth causes trade and that trade causes inequality are robust results. Furthermore, evidence strongly suggests that investment is important for trade, and the terms of trade between agricultural products and manufacturing products is an important causal determinant of both growth and trade.     

Technology gap,imported capital goods and productivity of manufacturing plants in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper uses firm-level data from Ghana, Tanzania and Kenya to examine the effect of capital goods imports on domestic firms' productivity, and the role firms' technology gap plays in aiding the transmission of knowledge embodied in capital goods to domestic firms. The results show that increasing imports of capital goods and closing technology gaps have positive effects on productivity. Furthermore, domestic firms with technology standards farther from international best practices benefit more from capital goods imports. The results also imply that trade liberalization policy aimed at eliminating tariffs on capital goods will significantly improve the performance of technically incompetent firms in the African manufacturing sector.     

Trade liberalization,production organization and informal sector of the developing countries

The paper provides an explanation of recent empirical evidence on fragmentation and the expansion of the informal sector in India. We argue that as the prospect of getting a better price in the international market increases, the producers in the formal sector act more like merchants and subcontract production activities to the producers in the informal sectors. Expanding production in the informal sector allows the firm to take advantage of a growing export market. Our theoretical model explains such organizational change in terms of allocation of monitoring effort between marketing and production. The existence of a low-wage informal sector facilitates division of labor and specialization in the formal segment.     

Trade policy,export expansion,human capital and growth

This paper empirically investigates the impact of trade policy on export expansion and on GDP growth in developing countries while controlling for the human capital stock and the initial level of development. By using a simultaneous system estimation we unite the approach found in the export expansion and growth literature with the approach found in papers that estimate the effect of trade policy on growth, while also making several improvements in the estimation of the underlying relationships. The results obtained from our estimation are more credible because of these improvements and therefore have stronger policy implications. We find that outward-oriented trade policies substantially and significantly impact growth in developing countries not only by directly enhancing exports but also through a feedback (or multiplier) effect.     

Productivity growth and cyclical behaviour in service industries: the Spanish case

A longstanding basis of empirical economics is that average labour productivity declines during recessions and increases during booms, and thus behaves procyclically. In the short run, in many countries output growth and productivity tend to move together and across a wide range of industries. In recent years, this observation has gained increased prominence as each proposed explanation for the observed procyclicality has important implications for modelling the business cycle and measuring the technical change. By filtering out the influence of business cycles, it is possible to isolate changes in the long run, or structural rate, of productivity growth and so assess the importance of any source for economic growth. Nevertheless, the focus of these empirical works has been the aggregate economy or manufacturing industries, and not the services sector. The novelty of this paper is the focus on the patterns within the services sector. The aim of this paper is to better understand short-run changes in productivity growth within the service sector industries, which are necessarily different from those existing within the manufacturing sector. Another goal of this research is to assess whether this observed procyclicality remains if the service sector is the scope of analysis, and whether this is homogeneous among the different activities within this miscellaneous sector or not. Empirical evidence for the Spanish economy since 1980 is presented.