World trade patterns and prices: The role of productivity and quality heterogeneity

This paper analyzes the role of product quality and labor efficiency in shaping the trade patterns and trade intensities within and across two groups of countries, the developed and richer North and the developing South. Recent empirical literature identifies two groups of evidence — the product lines evidence on different export strategies and sources of competitiveness across product groups and countries, and the aggregate trade flows evidence on a positive relation between the income per capita and both export and import prices (also conditional on the exporter). We attempt to provide a theoretical background for these findings and focus on the North–South productivity differences in a four country North–South trade model with two dimensions of firm heterogeneity. Differences in the firms' product quality and cost efficiency impose different competitiveness sources when entering more difficult markets and result in the observed export and import prices and consumption bundles across the rich and poor countries.     

Trade and the distribution of human capital

We develop a two-country, two-sector model of trade where the only difference between the two countries is their distribution of human capital endowments. We show that even if the two countries have identical aggregate human capital endowments the pattern of trade depends on the properties of the two human capital distributions. We also show that the two distributions of endowments also completely determine the effects of trade on income inequality. We also look at a simple majority voting model. It turns out autarky and free trade with and without compensation may be the voting outcome.     

Trade and the distribution of human capital

We develop a two-country, two-sector model of trade where the only difference between the two countries is their distribution of human capital endowments. We show that even if the two countries have identical aggregate human capital endowments the pattern of trade depends on the properties of the two human capital distributions. We also show that the two distributions of endowments also completely determine the effects of trade on income inequality. We also look at a simple majority voting model. It turns out autarky and free trade with and without compensation may be the voting outcome.     

统一大市场建设背景下的数字贸易驱动消费升级研究

立足于建设全国统一大市场的背景，研究不同市场一体化阶段数字贸易发展对消费升级的驱动作用。从机理上看，数字贸易通过创新供给和创新需求，驱动消费升级。将市场一体化的作用分为市场范围效应和价格稳定效应，通过构建数字贸易发展指标体系和面板门槛模型实证研究发现：数字贸易对消费升级的驱动具有门槛效应和非线性特征。随着市场一体化的市场范围效应提高,数字贸易对消费升级的驱动效应呈现“U” 型变化趋势；随着市场一体化的价格稳定效应提高，数字贸易对消费升级的驱动效应逐渐增强。中西部地区的驱动效应大于东部地区，内陆地区的驱动效应大于沿海地区。只有在市场一体化达到一定水平时，数字贸易对消费升级的驱动作用才能充分发挥。基于此，提出加快发展数字贸易和推进市场一体化建设等建议。     

信息化如何促进国内市场整合：减少黏性信息的视角

数字信息技术能够使市场主体以较低的成本获得及时、准确、充分的商品供求与价格信息，减少跨地区交易中的黏性信息，这为促进国内市场整合提供了新途径。文章采用2015-2017年近100个地级市的“数字中国”指数及大样本产品价格数据，使用基于时间序列的动态方法计算地区间市场分割度，并构建有调节的中介效应模型考察数字信息技术对国内市场整合的作用及机制。结果发现：提升信息化水平能够推动国内市场整合，其中促进地区间价格联动调整具有部分中介作用，而信息化水平差距和空间地理距离则具有负面的调节作用。因此，改善信息条件、提升交易效率，构建更为高效、灵敏的地区间供求与价格联动机制，应成为当前促进国内市场整合的必要之举。     

完善我国证券市场税制的国际借鉴及构想

完善的证券市场税制必然使证券市场持续稳定发展.本文在借鉴国际经验的基础上认为我国应根据证券市场证券运行的各个环节设置税种,由单一税制逐步向复合税制过渡,开征证券交易税、降低证券交易税负、开征证券交易所得税、规范证券投资所得税、开征遗产税,并区别长期投资和短期投机行为征税,以增强证券税制的弹性,更好的发挥调控作用.     

Trade and income convergence: Sorting out the causality

This paper studies the linkage between international trade and income convergence across countries. Different theories offer conflicting predictions regarding how they might affect each other. In the existing empirical literature estimating the trade impact on income convergence, a long-lasting problem is the reverse causality from income convergence to trade. This paper provides a disaggregated bilateral trade data analysis to solve this problem. The results show that the reverse causality from income convergence to trade exists in differentiated product sectors, but not in homogeneous product sectors. Trade in homogeneous sectors reduces the income gaps among trade partners, but it is not significantly affected by their income difference. Therefore, the negative effect of trade in homogeneous sectors on the income gap is free from the reverse causality problem. It can be taken as a pure evidence of trade-induced income convergence. This result is robust to various econometric methods.     

Factors Influencing China’s Exports with a Spatial Econometric Model

This article employs a spatial econometric model to examine whether China’s exports are affected by political risk, economic integration, and spatial effects. The results show that as China’s economy has grown, a home market effect is evident for its exports. A higher level of economic integration is beneficial to China’s exports. A substitutive relationship is discovered between China’s OFDI and exports. In addition, the higher income per capita of partner countries and the high degree of economic openness are both beneficial to China’s exports. The partner countries of China, with their higher values of export trade, have been mostly countries with lower political risk.     

Per capita income,market access costs,and trade volumes

There is strong empirical evidence that countries with lower per capita income tend to have smaller trade volumes even after controlling for aggregate income. Furthermore, poorer countries do not just trade less, but have a lower number of trading partners. In this paper, I construct and estimate a general equilibrium model of trade that captures both these features of the trade data. The key element of the model is an association between trade costs (both variable and fixed) and countries' development levels, which can account for the effect of per capita income on trade volumes and explain many zeros in bilateral trade flows. I find that market access costs play an important role in fitting the model to the data. In a counterfactual analysis, I find that removing the asymmetries in trade costs raises welfare in all countries with an average percentage change equal to 29% and larger gains for smaller and poorer countries. Real income inequality falls by 43%.     

技术贸易壁垒下中美纺织品贸易竞争力及影响因素研究

采用国际市场占有率、显性比较优势指数及贸易互补性指数分析了中美两国纺织品在国际市场中的竞争地位及各纺织品类贸易互补性强度,并将美国发布的纺织行业技术通报(TBT)作为技术变量纳入随机前沿引力模型,进一步实证分析中美纺织品贸易的影响因素。结果表明:中国纺织品国际竞争优势强于美国,尤其表现在纺织制成品类;出口角度看,两国在纺织制成品类上呈现显著贸易互补性,进口角度看,两国在纺织原料上具有较强互补性。在影响因素中,技术壁垒、进口国经济、出口国人口及两国距离负向抑制中美纺织品贸易,出口国经济、进口国人口及人均收入之差正向促进中美纺织贸易发展。     

Trade configurations in Asia: Assessing de facto and de jure regionalism

Given the backdrop of significant uncertainties largely propelled by the ongoing trade spat between the United States and China, to what degree can the Asian region move forward in terms of de facto trade integration? Drawing on the new economic geography literature, this paper offers new insights into the literature on trade regionalism in Asia by empirically illustrating how Asian economies can tap into the regional market potential. Specifically, the paper examines the scope for further de facto integration among the Asian countries engaged in the negotiation for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement by estimating foreign market potential (FMP) indices. To preview the main findings, the empirical analysis demonstrates that the share of intra-regional trade in total RCEP trade flows and, consequently, the ratio between within- and outside-RCEP trades are significantly lower than what they could potentially be. The paper makes a case that the enhancement of de jure integration among these economies through the RCEP must be accompanied by efforts to improve de facto integration.     

出口与劳动力市场“错配”——江苏制造业的证据

文章把异于传统劳动力市场、在中国最典型的高技能劳动过剩与低技能劳动短缺现象称为中国式劳动力市场错配,认为全球分工体系中发展中国家与发达国家以产品贸易表现的就业互换是导致发展中国家劳动力市场出现错配的重要原因。采用企业层面微观数据进行的实证分析表明,企业销售额中用于出口的比重、出口到发达国家的比重越大,企业对技能员工的需求和雇佣就越少。此实证结果可能说明,中国式劳动力市场错配是由过度参与全球分工体系导致的,过度贸易自由化导致劳动力市场困境。但这并非简单意味减少企业国际贸易、拓展国内市场就可以有效增加技能员工需求、解决高校毕业生就业难问题,促进经济发展方式由供给推动向需求拉动转变,促使企业更多以消费者需求为导向才是治本之策。     

Income distribution and unequal gains from trade

This paper studies welfare gains from trade in a tractable model with a nonhomothetic preference over product quality. We show that the welfare changes due to trade shocks are unequal across consumers and derive a parsimonious formula to measure these welfare changes as in Arkolakis et al. (2012, American Economic Review, 102, 94–130). We find that the welfare changes are larger for consumers with lower income. Moreover, this paper shows that the welfare implications are different between a change in (iceberg-type) variable trade cost and a change in tariff when tariff revenue matters. More importantly, we show that the difference varies across consumers with different income levels.     

Do High‐Skill Immigrants trigger High‐Quality Trade?

This paper investigates the links between product quality and the pro‐trade effect of ethnic networks using a large panel on bilateral stocks of immigrants with information for 19 OECD destination countries and 177 origin countries. In line with the approach of Rauch and Trindade, we classify traded goods according to their quality level and separately estimate pro‐trade elasticity of ethnic networks for each subgroup. We allow for heterogeneity of immigrants according to both the level of per capita income of their country of origin and their education level. Our findings suggest that the trend of the pro‐trade effect of immigrants over quality seems to be driven by the North–South specialisation across varieties for both supply and demand. Indeed, ethnic networks mostly facilitate imports of those varieties for which their countries of origin have a comparative advantage; as for exports, ethnic networks are more effective in promoting exports to their homeland of those varieties for which there is relatively higher demand. We show that the same trend applies to products characterised by the same degree of differentiation according to the classification proposed by Rauch and – given their lower liquidity constraints and advantages in human capital – we find a greater impact of high‐skilled migrants consistent across all quality levels.     

Gatekeepers to consumer markets: the role of retailers in international trade

This study explores how recent developments in the retail sector affect trade in consumer goods. It focuses on three developments in the retail sector: (i) internationalization; (ii) market structure; and (iii) the growing market share of retailers' private labels. Using gravity model estimation techniques it is found that the foreign operations of a retailer are positively related to imports from the host to the home country of the retailer. Imports are negatively related to ownership concentration, while the market share of private labels is negatively related to imports of food and positively related to imports of non-food consumer goods. For both product categories private labels shift sourcing towards poor countries. The trade response to trade liberalization is higher both at the extensive and intensive margin in countries with lower retail concentration.     

农产品流通市场化与农业收入增长:理论与实证

农产品流通市场化程度是影响农业收入的重要因素,本文在对二者关系进行理论探讨的基础上,使用面板协整分析法,利用1991～2009年间我国三省一市的农业经济数据,就农产品流通市场化程度对农业收入的影响进行了实证分析.研究发现,农产品流通市场化程度与农业收入之间存在稳定的长期均衡关系,但短期关系并不明显.从长远来看,继续推进农业市场化改革,提高农产品流通的市场化程度是增加农民收入的重要途径.     

Trade protection and tax evasion: Evidence from Kenya,Mauritius, and Nigeria

We examine the effect of trade protection rates on evasion in three African countries Kenya, Mauritius, and Nigeria. In capturing the effect of trade protection on tariff evasion, we use a much improved measure of trade protection (MAcMap-HS6 2001 and 2004). For two of these countries, this dataset allows the novelty of using variation in trade protection across product, time, and trading partners leading to significantly refined estimates of evasion elasticity relative to existing studies on tariff evasion. We find a robust evidence for positive elasticity of evasion with respect to tariffs in Kenya and Nigeria with relatively weaker evidence for Mauritius. Our results match the rankings of countries in institutional quality. Greater responsiveness of evasion to the level of tariffs is established in Nigeria (comparatively weak institutional quality) vis-à-vis Kenya, and in Kenya vis-à-vis Mauritius (comparatively good institutional quality). This pattern is preserved even when focusing on same set of trading partners and same set of imported products for the three countries. This result is robust to controlling for protection on related products (that creates incentives/ opportunities for evasion) and also for degree of differentiation of the product and some other characteristics.     

Is Africa integrating? Evidence from product markets

This paper presents a price-based assessment of product market integration in Africa using disaggregated retail prices for 91 products and 12 African cities from 1991 to 2008. We find evidence of substantial deviations from the law of one price ? product price differences between the cities averaged 76% over the period – a result that is consistent with the presence of large barriers to trade in the continent. Mean price differences across cities fell by close to a quarter over the period, but the decline was concentrated in the early 1990s with little progress subsequently, despite the regional trade policies implemented by the countries. Gravity-style estimates reveal that reductions in external tariffs and global trends towards price convergence in the early 1990s are the key contributors to the trend in price integration amongst the African cities.     

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。     

Does Trade Liberalisation Trigger Tax Competition? Theory and Evidence from OECD Countries

This paper aims at assessing the empirical relevance of new economic geography models of tax competition. We rely on a simple model to specify tax reactions functions, which we estimate with a panel covering (up to) 26 OECD countries over the period 1982 to 2006. We provide striking support for the two main predictions regarding the slope and the constant of the reaction function: national governments seem to adjust their corporate tax rate towards the level chosen in countries that are more populated, and they tend to set higher corporate tax rates when their country enjoys a high real market potential. Through the latter effect, trade integration exerts a positive influence on the level of corporate taxation. However, using a theoretically grounded index of bilateral trade integration, we also show that trade liberalisation gives rise to significant tax interactions in the setting of effective average tax rates in the case of European countries, thus exerting a downward pressure on corporate tax rates.