U.S. Strategic Trade Policy and the Competitiveness of the U.S. Construction Industry in Developing Country Markets

SUMMARY

U.S. government trade policy increasingly reflects “strategic trade” beliefs that, because competition in markets is imperfect, governments can act strategically to affect trade flows and enhance national welfare. The U.S. National Export Strategy targets the infrastructure sector in twelve developing countries as a strategic opportunity for U.S. construction firms. This paper examines whether U.S. government export promotion initiatives effectively implement strategic trade policy by providing appropriate support to these firms in that target market. It concludes that, within limits, they do.     

On the need to compensate the compensating variation in CGE modeling

The message of this research is that in the standard calibrated setting of Computational General Equilibrium (CGE) models, the welfare measures typically used to compare benchmark with counterfactuals are numéraire dependent. This evaluation bias affects the compensating variation and the Konüs index of cost of living. We show that the equivalent variation is neutral regarding the choice of value units in calibrated models but would be affected as well in uncalibrated CGE models. We illustrate with a simple example and propose an even simpler theoretical solution to overcome these biases; all that is required to have correct welfare estimates is to compensate normalizing with a suitable price index. This type of correction is necessary to overcome the sometimes blind implementation of welfare measures in numerical general equilibrium analysis. We show that the induced quantitative errors may be substantial providing biased welfare estimates and misleading results.     

Food-For-Work versus Cash-For-Work: Emergency Assistance in Palestine

In this paper we analyse the provision of emergency assistance (food assistance, cash transfers, employment programmes, etc) to a country whose economy has been decimated since the start of the second intifada. We try to simulate the different potential effects brought about by these different policies and, in particular, to draw some policy implications concerning the Food-for-Work versus Cash-for-Work debate. To that end we have constructed a general equilibrium model of the Palestinian economy that we calibrate on the (pre-intifada) Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) of 1998. We give a so-called 'intifada-shock' to construct a counterfactual 'post-intifada' SAM which serves as basis for our policy simulations. We show that monetary aid from abroad is to be preferred to food aid from abroad. We argue that a labour-oriented approach (subsidizing the most labour-intensive sectors) is to be preferred to a welfare-oriented approach where the subsidized sectors produce those goods that dominate the consumption basket.     

Using a Demand System to Estimate Extended Input–Output Multipliers

The interface between household income and expenditure has always been considered to be a key component in the construction of input–output models. However, it can be argued that households are too often treated as if they were just another in dustry in the input–output table. In this paper, we seek to address this problem by developing a new modelling framework in which a micro demand system is used to estim ate the relationship between income and expenditure. This demand system is conjoined with an input–output table for the UK economy, and the system as a whole is solved as a computable general equilibrium model. Comparisons are made between the Jacobian multipliers generated by this model and those derived from a more traditional input–output model in which the income-expenditure linkage is estimated using static coefficients.     

浅析沈阳地区的中韩贸易发展

随着区域经济一体化的蓬勃发展,中韩贸易发展迅速,贸易合作不断增加。沈阳作为东北最大的中心城市与文化交流中心,其优越的地理环境和文化背景又为中韩两国的贸易发展提供了便利条件。文中将以沈阳地区为例,全面阐述中韩两国的贸易关系与贸易政策,通过对中韩经济发展情况的研究,深入探讨中韩两国贸易的发展现状及前景,探究其在发展过程中存在的问题,并提出可行性促进方案和解决对策。     

中国对美国贸易出口的实证分析——基于1994-2008统计数据

美国的次贷危机最终演变成了全球的经济危机,不仅金融市场遭到了重创,而且实体经济最终也无能幸免。对于我国来说,中国的对外出口下滑态势日渐显现。美国作为中国最大的出口市场,中国对美出口变动对中国的外贸反映具有很好的代表性。文中运用计量经济学方法,基于1994-2008年的中美贸易数据,试图找出决定中国对美国贸易出口变化的一般规律,并对中国外贸经济发展模式转变提出建议。     

Input–Output Analysis,Labour Scarcity and Relative Price Endogeneity: Aggregate Demand Disturbances in a ‘Flex-price’ Leontief System

In this paper, we introduce scarcity into a conventional demand-driven input–output system to produce a ‘flex-price’ Leontief model. We retain the fixed technical coefficients but allow changes in relative prices to reflect variations in the real wage. Because the consumption coefficients increase with the real wage, the aggregate labour demand curve is found to be upward sloping. This produces conventional results, as long as the labour supply curve is perfectly elastic (horizontal). However, once we introduce labour scarcity, in the form of an upward sloping labour supply function, we derive the seemingly paradoxical result that the output and employment effects of a demand expansion are greater here than in conventional input–output. Through simulation, this result is found to be strongly dependent on the assumption of export exogeneity.     

Agricultural Trade Liberalization in a Computable General Equilibrium Framework for the Philippines

A bi-regional and multi-market computable general equilibrium model that focuses on the agricultural sector of the Philippines' economy in 1987 is constructed. This paper presents the basic structure of the model and carries out some cost-benefit analyses to assess the impact of alternative trade reform policies on the economy. It is found that various liberalization policies can produce large benefits, but any single policy implemented separately may incur intolerable costs. However, a combination of trade liberalization and currency devaluation, coupled with target income support and income tax reform, can achieve balanced results that are beneficial to the economy without worsening income distribution and food consumption of the poor.     

中国对美国的贸易成本变动及影响因素研究

作为影响国际交换能否发生的重要因素,贸易成本已成为国际贸易研究的重要领域。在采用Novy模型就1995年至2012年中国对美国的贸易成本进行有效测度的基础上,对影响贸易成本变动的多种因素进行分析,结果显示：中国对美国贸易成本总体上呈现波浪式下降趋势;人民币过快升值会对贸易成本的降低产生不利影响;中国商业环境改善、进口关税水平降低等因素有助于降低贸易成本;原油价格变动对贸易成本的影响不大;FDI、美国进口关税水平与中美贸易成本之间不存在长期均衡关系。基于进一步分析发现,中国对美国贸易成本还有下降的空间,中国应充分挖掘贸易成本下降的途径,以进一步提高出口商品的竞争力。     

美国对华直接投资对中美贸易影响的实证分析

改革开放以来,中国吸收利用外资取得了举世瞩目的成果。美国作为中国最重要的外资来源国和贸易出口国,已对促进中美贸易经济的发展发挥着越来越重要的作用。然而,在中美双边贸易得到快速发展的同时,也出现了中美贸易的不平衡问题。本文从投资与贸易关系的角度出发,通过定量分析检验美国在华直接投资与中美贸易之间是否存在长期协整关系以及双向或单向的格兰杰因果关系,最终结果表明,美国在华直接投资的增长确实促进了中国对美国的出口及中美贸易差额的扩大。针对新形势下中美贸易的特点,文章提出了促进美国对华直接投资与中美贸易协调发展的政策建议。     

Input–output linkages and the propagation of domestic productivity shocks: assessing alternative theories with stochastic simulation

Relatively small sectoral productivity shocks could lead to sizable macroeconomic variability. Whereas most contributions in the literature analyze the issue of aggregate sensitivity using simple general equilibrium models, a novel approach is proposed in this paper, based on stochastic simulations with a global computable general equilibrium model. We find that the variability of the GDP, induced by sectoral shocks, is basically determined by the degree of industrial concentration as measured by the Herfindahl index of industrial value added. The degree of centrality in inter-industrial connectivity, measured by the standard deviation of second-order degrees, is mildly significant, but it is also correlated with the industrial concentration index. After controlling for the correlation effect, we find that connectivity turns out to be statistically significant, although less so than granularity.     

Endogenous International Technology Spillovers and Biased Technical Change in Agriculture

This paper analyzes trade-related knowledge flows from an innovating country to other countries. It is assumed that knowledge is embodied in commodities traded between countries and that the potential productivity of this knowledge is determined by the local usability of foreign technologies. The usability of foreign knowledge is dependent on the local absorption capacity (such as knowledge infrastructure and human capital) and on structural differences (factor endowments or climate) between countries. In agriculture, a large portion of the knowledge is embodied in inputs which cause factor-biased technical change in the receiving sectors. Trade-related knowledge transmission is introduced in an applied multi-region general equilibrium model (GTAP) to study the macro-economic and sectoral impacts of knowledge spillovers and of trade policies. Endogenous embodied technology spillovers bear some important implications for trade policy, because protective measures preclude countries not only from cheaper imports but also from foreign technologies.     

DEVELOPMENT OF REGIONAL SOCIAL ACCOUNTING MATRICES WITH DETAILED AGRICULTURAL LAND RENT DATA AND IMPROVED VALUE-ADDED COMPONENTS FOR THE USA

We describe a method for creating social accounting matrices (SAMs) with detailed agricultural land rent data for any arbitrary subset of the 48 contiguous states in the USA. Data on land use and land rents from various public sources is merged with national accounts data. The method reorganizes the rental income of persons concept present in national accounts to payments to conventional primary factors of production. This method also reallocates portions of the indirect business tax account to the appropriate sales and import tax accounts. SAMs created using this method should be useful inputs into input–output or computable general equilibrium models explicitly representing a heterogeneous land market and analyzing the economic effects of agricultural, bioenergy, water and climate policies on land-use change, land rents, agricultural commodity markets, trade and households’ welfare. The method's implementation is freely available, enabling others to rapidly create SAMs with their own desired region and sector aggregations.