Trade and Wage Inequality: Local versus Global Comparative Advantages

This paper shows that disentangling the local and global dimensions of trade can be crucial to get a better understanding of the trade impact on wage inequality. In particular, it allows us to reconcile the empirical evidence with the Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson predictions. Our focus here is on Italy. As for local trade – within its own cone of diversification – Italy is specialised in the production of unskill‐intensive goods, while for global trade – with respect to the other cone of diversification – it is mainly specialised in the production of skill‐intensive goods. On the evidence of these specialisation patterns, we point out that the local trade has a strong impact on wage inequality. In particular, in line with the Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson predictions, the local export performance reduces wage inequality as it favours blue‐collar workers. As for global trade, it affects and increases wage inequality through the export channel, again consistent with the Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson predictions.     

China,India and the Commodity Boom: Economic and Environmental Implications for Low‐income Countries

The international role of China has risen steadily for two decades – and has become even more important in the current global recession. The growing supply of labour‐intensive manufactured exports from China has been accompanied by a huge expansion in its imports both of raw materials and of skill‐intensive manufactured parts and components. This ‘offshoring’ of intermediates production by a large, labour‐abundant economy has economic and environmental implications for other developing economies. More recently, the rapid expansion of the Indian economy and trade indicates that it too will soon exert similar effects on global markets. We sketch a model showing how the growth of these developing‐country ‘giants’ generates adjustment pressures on other developing economies. We discuss in particular how differences in relative factor endowments of resource‐rich economies can produce quite different outcomes in the context of product fragmentation and expanding commodity trade. We also explore the effects on production, trade, environment and prospects for future growth in resource‐rich economies, particularly in the context of weak institutions and other market failures. We illustrate these different impacts by considering the cases of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand and highlight implications for growth, development and policy.     

全球供应链调整变化与我国应对策略研究

受全球经济格局重塑、经贸规则变化、科技进步和新冠疫情冲击等多重因素影响,全球供应链正在深度调整。我国作为全球供应链制造环节的地位正在改变,发达国家加速生产制造等供应链部分环节回归本地化,贸易保护主义行为加速构筑新壁垒,供应链从开放性、普惠性、全球性重返封闭性、歧视性、区域性,供应链从经济利益最大化的单一绩效向经济、环境和社会的多重综合绩效转变。这些趋势变化对我国制造大国地位和产业安全构成严峻挑战,也带来倒逼我国产业转型升级,由全球供应链参与者变为主导者的重要机遇。我国须主动适应趋势变化,将现代供应链上升为国家战略,巩固制造业综合优势,支持企业全球布局,参与国际合作治理,提升参与和把控全球供应链的主动权,维护全球供应链稳定,构建“以我为主”、弹性安全供应链,维护国家经济与产业安全。     

Trade Policies in Southeast Asia in the Wider Asian Perspective

This paper takes stock of trade policies in Southeast Asia after the Asian crisis and in the wake of the current global economic crisis. It compares trade policies in individual Southeast Asian countries; places them in the context of regional and global economic integration; and particularly draws implications for the region from the rise of China and India. The first section looks at recent trade and FDI patterns in Southeast Asia. Then follows an overview of key trade‐policy trends, in the region overall and in individual countries. The next sections examine ASEAN countries in international trade negotiations and agreements: first in the WTO, especially in the Doha Round; then within ASEAN; and finally on cross‐regional FTAs. The paper concludes that ASEAN countries cannot rely on external tracks ‘from above’ for meaningful trade policy reform. Since the Asian crisis there has been a slowdown of reform momentum, and too much reliance on trade negotiations – especially FTAs. Rather, countries in the region have to rely on themselves –‘from below’ as it were. The engine of liberalisation and regulatory reform has to be home‐driven – as it was before the Asian crisis – with governments taking unilateral measures in response to internal and external conditions.     

Sustainability and the False Sense of Legitimacy: How Institutional Distance Augments Risk in Global Supply Chains

Supply chain scholars have begun to recognize the institutional influences on supply chains, yet scarce attention has been directed toward the fact that global supply chains often comprise different institutions. This omission represents a severe shortcoming because the understanding of what constitutes legitimate behavior may vary substantially between contexts. This conceptual study employs the institutional distance concept to the case of supply chain sustainability risks. It focuses initially on paradoxical situations in which both the buyer and the supplier fully comply with stakeholder expectations within their own legitimacy contexts, yet the buyer's stakeholders still withdraw legitimacy from and harm the buyer. The study analyzes the causal microfoundations of how and why such paradoxical risks manifest, drawing on stakeholder theory and institutional theory. The analysis shows that accounting for the differing legitimacy contexts is necessary for explaining these risks, thereby substantiating our initial claim that institutional distance matters to global supply chains. The study yields important implications for corporate practice in that it highlights an inherent trade‐off in many global supply chains.     

跨国公司全球供应链管理背景下的上海国际贸易中心建设

在经济全球化的浪潮下,全球化供应链管理越来越受到跨国公司的重视。文章通过对跨国公司全球供应链发展动因的分析,探讨了跨国公司在我国实施全球供应链管理战略的新趋势。结合上海建设国际贸易中心的实践,文章提出加强其跨国采购中心和国际研发中心建设,使整个上海成为跨国公司的国际供应链中心,从而为上海国际贸易中心建设服务。     

AEO制度及国际海关 AEO互认研究——基于供应链安全与便利的视角

近年来,国际交易和运输在国际供应链上继续保持活跃的同时,随着全球恐怖主义威胁的上升,供应链中也添加了以反恐为目的的重要安全环节。本文在对AEO制度及国际互认研究的基础上,指出在现今的商业模式中,海关与商界以及海关与海关之间只有紧密合作才能促进整个供应链的便利与安全,建议创建安全与便利的全球供应链管理环境以促进国际贸易的发展。     

Multilateralising Regionalism: Spaghetti Bowls as Building Blocs on the Path to Global Free Trade

This paper addresses the final steps to global free trade – what they might look like, what sort of political economy forces might drive them, and what the WTO might do to help. Two facts form the point of departure: (1) Regionalism is here to stay; world trade is regulated by a motley assortment of unilateral, bilateral and multilateral trade agreements; (2) this motley assortment is not the best way to organise world trade. Moving to global duty‐free trade will require a multilateralisation of regionalism. This paper presents the political economy logic of trade liberalisation and uses it to structure a narrative of world trade liberalisation since 1947. The logic is then used to project the world tariff map in 2010, arguing that the pattern will be marked by fractals – fuzzy, leaky trade blocs made up of fuzzy, leaky sub‐blocs (fuzzy since the proliferation of FTAs makes it impossible to draw sharp lines around the Big‐3 trade blocs, and leaky since some FTAs create free trade ‘canals’ linking the Big‐3 blocs). The paper then presents a novel political economy mechanism – spaghetti bowls as building blocs – whereby offshoring creates a force that encourages the multilateralisation of regionalism. Finally, the paper suggests three things the WTO might do to help multilateralise regionalism.     

Supply Relational Risk: What Role Does Guanxi Play?

The topics of supply chain risk and global sourcing have garnered significant attention in recent years. Although there is ample circumstantial evidence of global sourcing risk, especially from the western‐firm perspective of sourcing from China, few published studies have investigated the root causes of this risk. In this paper, we argue that much of the risk associated with sourcing from China stems from the differences associated with institutional norms and philosophical orientation between western and Chinese thought and culture. Based on an in‐depth literature review and case analysis, we compare western forms of supply chain relationship management with Guanxi, the Chinese form of relationship management and propose a framework of how western firms are exposed to supply relational risk when sourcing from Chinese suppliers. The framework proposed in this article sheds light for supply chain managers with regard to the potential pitfalls facing firms when working with Chinese suppliers, and provides the groundwork for future research regarding supply chain practices and Guanxi networks.     

Trade Effects of the European Union's Service Directive: Contrasting ex ante Estimates with Empirical Evidence

One of the top priorities to improve the European Union's growth performance is the creation of a single market for services. The directive on services adopted by the Parliament and the Council by the end of 2006 aims at removing barriers to the free movement of service providers on the internal market. Previous studies quantified ex ante sizable effects of implementing the directive in its original form. This paper is a first attempt to evaluate ex post the trade effects induced by a directive – which excludes the country‐of‐origin principle – by performing a difference‐in‐difference‐(in‐differences) estimator on a sample of EU‐ and non‐EU countries in the period 2004 to 10. We account for non‐tariff trade barriers and the endogeneity of regional trade agreements and find that the service directive adds to a reallocation of business services trade within the EU. Accounting for the trade effect of past deregulations, the EU directive fosters a deeper integration of the new member states into the European service value‐added‐chain and promotes business service exports from third countries towards the EU significantly more than trade of country pairs in the control group. The reorientation of the EU‐15 towards the new members is in turn associated with less intense intra‐EU‐10 businesses, while business trade between EU‐15 members is not significantly affected.     

Supply Chains,Global Financial Shocks and Firm Behaviour towards Liquidity Needs

Driven by the increasingly important role of supply chains in global production, this paper studies empirical association between global credit‐market shocks and firm behaviour towards liquidity needs across countries and industries. Focusing on the adjustment of working‐capital financing, we find two pieces of supporting evidence from international firm‐level panel data covering the period 2002:I–2012:IV. First, for industries where specific investment in the input supplier–customer relationship is large, firms are more exposed to credit‐market shocks. We find that measures of global credit‐market shocks are negatively associated with trade receivables, trade payables and inventories, conditional on the level of contract intensity in the industries where firms operate. Second, firms in emerging markets are more vulnerable to credit‐market shocks than are firms in developed countries. We are also able to verify the economic significance of sales growth, operating cash flows, cash stock and firm size in the overall adjustment. Our findings highlight the importance of balance‐sheet contagion along supply chains during the 2007–09 global financial crisis.     

Technology Trade in Economic Development

Recent evidence on the respective contributions of institutions and trade to income levels across countries has demonstrated that – once endogeneity is considered – institutional quality clearly dominates the effect of trade. We argue that overall trade is not the most appropriate measure for technology diffusion as a source of productivity growth and propose to focus on imports of research and development (R&D)‐intensive goods instead. Overall, we confirm previous findings that institutions matter most and that overall trade is not positively associated with per‐capita income levels. Yet this does not hold for technology trade, as there is a positive and significant linkage between technology imports and income levels. This outcome is robust to various model specifications, including an instrumental variables approach.     

Economic Effects of the Syrian War and the Spread of the Islamic State on the Levant

This paper uses a global computable general equilibrium framework with new detail on six Levant countries – the Arab Republic of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic and Turkey – to quantify the direct and indirect economic effects of the Syrian war and the advance of the Islamic State on the Levant. Syria and Iraq bear the brunt of the direct economic costs, while the other Levant countries lose in per capita but not in aggregate terms as the inflows of refugees increase the size of their populations. The war has undermined progress towards deeper regional trade integration, thus adding to varying degrees to the direct costs sustained by the Levant economies and, in the cases of Syria and Iraq, doubling their welfare losses. All Levant countries are foregoing opportunities to expand intra‐Levant trade and the associated gains in economic efficiency. The average welfare effects are not indicative of the distributional effects of war within countries.     

Trade Wars: The Exaggerated Impact of Trade in Economic Debate

The rules governing trade and capital flows have been at the centre of controversy as globalisation has proceeded. One reason is the belief that trade and capital flows have massive effects on the labour market – either positive, per the claims of international financial institutions and free trade enthusiasts, or negative, per the ubiquitous protestors at WTO, IMF and World Bank meetings demanding global labour standards. Comparing the claims made in this debate with the outcomes of trade agreements, this paper finds that the debate has exaggerated the effects of trade on economies and the labour market. Changes in trade policy have had modest impacts on the labour market. Other aspects of globalisation – immigration, capital flows and technology transfer – have greater impacts, with volatile capital flows creating great risk for the well-being of workers. As for labour standards, global standards do not threaten the comparative advantage of developing countries nor do poor labour standards create a ‘race to the bottom’.     

The Gravity of China's African Export Promise

Africa's largest trade partner, China, criticised for exchanging resources for manufactures, has promised to increase imports and optimise the structure of trade with Africa. Using a gravity model of China's imports for the years 1995–2009, we explore potential dynamics for this promise, uniquely accounting for market economy recognition and Taiwan recognition. The former is associated with increased imports, while the latter effect is ambiguous and statistically insignificant. Comparison of projected against actual imports across three growth‐path‐aligned economic geography typologies – resource‐rich; landlocked and resource‐poor; coastal and resource‐poor – sets out China's imports trends in an abstract framework of African export potential. We find not only ‘under’ importing across a majority of resource‐poor countries. We also find that current trade policy is the least applicable to these comparatively poor exporters’ trade with China. If the latter are to serve a broader catalytic role in Africa's regional industrial transformation as compared to the role of coastal and resource‐poor countries in regional economic transformation in Asia and Latin America, China–Africa trade and investment policies may need additional thinking.     

Health Care Matters: Supply Chains In and Of the Health Sector

Providing health care involves a complex enterprise, and the trade‐off between quality and cost has been particularly stark compared to other industries. However, a recent focus on health sector supply networks is now producing significant innovations and improvements. This Special Topic Forum illustrates for the academic and practitioner community how health care supply chain research can benefit from our evolving understanding of supply chains and help push that understanding even further. We classify health care supply chain research into two broad categories—supply chain in health care and supply chain of health care—to set an agenda for future research.     

Development Path of China and India and the Challenges for their Sustainable Growth

The segmentation of global manufacturing and services provided China and subsequently India with a golden opportunity to make full use of their absolute advantage – low‐cost, yet educated labour – to integrate into the world economy within a comparatively shorter period of time than some earlier industrialisers. Though international trade functioned as a vent of surplus in view of the narrowness of their domestic markets at the beginning of their economic catch‐up, the label of export‐led model may not reflect the real picture as imports underwent dramatic increases during their respective growth periods, in particular for China. Foreign direct investment has played a pivotal role in their economic growth and has major presence in international trade and investment in leading sectors of both countries, giving rise to certain special features and weak links for their economic expansion and sustainability of fast economic growth. To maintain more broad‐based, fast and balanced growth, it seems that both countries have to redress sectoral imbalances, encourage technology upgrading and cope with future changes in demographic profiles which constituted a trigger to fast economic growth at the time of their respective economic reform.     

全球贸易衰退、价值链重构及中国出口价值链升级研究

2008年国际金融危机爆发后,全球贸易和价值链分工位次发生了明显的变化。发达经济体国内价值链出现收缩,发展中经济体国内价值链出现延伸,全球贸易一改之前的长期增长态势,转而出现了衰退。与此同时,新兴经济力量的崛起、贸易增加值分布格局的改变、微笑曲线的变化及全球价值链的本地化区域化收缩,都推动着全球价值链的重构。虽然全球贸易衰退会严重影响中国出口贸易转型升级,但全球价值链重构有助于中国企业打破低端锁定局面。在此背景下,应积极引导中国企业从低端锁定转向锁定高端,加快构建自贸区网络以推动中国贸易向边境内深化,并借助"一带一路"平台加快构建中国主导的全球价值链网络,从而实现中国出口价值链升级。     

The Evolution of Resilience in Supply Chain Management: A Retrospective on Ensuring Supply Chain Resilience

We opened our 2010 paper in the Journal of Business Logistics with a 6th century quote by Heraclitus – “The only constant is change.” This immutable law certainly holds in today's volatile business world, especially for supply chain management, and has been the driving factor behind the interest in resilience. Since the seminal works of the mid‐to‐late 1990s and early 2000s, the supply chain discipline has progressed toward a common understanding of resilience. But we're not there yet. This paper reflects on the impact of our 2010 paper, and envisions future opportunities for advances in resilience that will improve both day‐to‐day business continuity and long‐term sustainability. We are honored to be selected for this 40th Anniversary Issue of the Journal of Business Logistics, and proud that our paper has been recognized as the most cited of the decade.     

Understanding supplier selection practices: Differences between u.s. And korean executives

Over the past decades, U.S. firms have increasingly explored strategic supply chain partnerships with Asian firms. Although shaken by the financial crises in 1997, Asian firms also continue to make significant investment in the U.S. and develop strategic supply chain partnership with U.S. firms. These trends have prompted academic researchers to start focusing on global supply chain management prac‐tices. One important domain of supply chain management is the selection of sup‐pliers. This research examines the differences in supplier selection practices between U.S. and Asian (in particular, Korean) executives. The results provide important implications for both U.S. and Korean firms to successfully manage global supply chain management. ? 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.