Greasing the Wheels of Trade: A Profile of the Dutch Transaction Sector***

How many resources does a nation spend on transactions costs to ‘grease the wheels of trade’? To examine this question the Dutch economy is used as a case study. The Netherlands are known as a nation of traders and this image was derived in the seventeenth century from successes in long distance trade, shipping and financial innovations. Despite its historical background the trading sector has never been adequately measured. In this paper, we present a first attempt in measuring and describing the Dutch transaction sector. Measurement by means of occupational data points out that approximately 25% of Dutch workers is employed in transaction jobs, and 29% if one includes transport tasks. We make the case that traditional industrial sector categories overestimate the true transaction character of an economy. Traditional ‘trade’ sectors employed 13% of the workers in 1807 and 39 percent in 1998, but these figures conceal the fact that all organizations employ jobs which have transformation and transaction tasks. A counterfactual exercise suggests that the growth of the transaction sector share in employment over two centuries was not 200% but 42%.     

闽台农产品贸易流量和潜力分析

内容以贸易引力模型为基础,结合实际情况加入解释变量建立模型,定量分析闽台农产品贸易状况。通过对模型的实证检验,得出影响闽台农产品贸易流量的主要因素有GDP总量、人均GDP、FDI,在此基础上预测了两地农产品贸易潜力,得出闽台目前存在贸易不足,双方存在较大贸易潜力的结论,并提出相关建议。     

Explaining Trade Flows of Singapore

The objective of this paper is twofold. First, the development of the trade patterns of Singapore and particularly between Singapore and its South-East Asian partners will be outlined and interpreted against a backdrop of relevant trade policy measures, for example in the context of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Second, a simple model of the gravity type is applied in order to establish and quantify the role of various trade determinants. Despite the fact that Singapore has strived at being a 'global city', it remains rather heavily biased towards East Asia as far as foreign trade is concerned. The role of ASEAN in particular is strong, even if the role of entrepôt trade tends to exaggerate the degree of integration between the economies of Singapore and ASEAN. It also seems clear that the latter, as an organization, has not contributed much to the development of trade relations between its members. Rather the closeness and the liberalization of these economies during the last 15 years or so appear to have been decisive. It is interesting to note that the newer members of ASEAN seem to have been integrated quickly in Singapore's economic network.     

Trade Costs and Intra-Industry Trade

Formal economic modeling of intra-industry trade ignores transportation or, more broadly, trade costs. Yet, as Anderson and van Wincoop (2004) suggest, trade costs are quite large. This paper extends work by Bergstrand (1990) that addressed intra-industry trade in the explicit presence of trade costs. In the context of a Helpman–Krugman-cum-trade-costs model, we derive four empirically testable hypotheses regarding intra-industry trade and trade costs. These hypotheses are investigated empirically using a cross-section of bilateral OECD Grubel–Lloyd indexes. The results are strongly in accordance with the hypotheses, indicating the importance of a more rigorous and systematic treatment of trade costs in the intra-industry trade literature. JEL no. F14, F15     

Border Effect Estimates for France and Germany Combining International Trade and Intranational Transport Flows

Since the seminal contribution of McCallum (1995) economists have tried to estimate the border effect for other countries than the United States and Canada, but have been confronted with a key data problem: data on regional trade flows are extremely rare. The different approaches put forward to overcome this lack of information have been shown to hinge crucially on certain distance measures. The main purpose of this paper is to develop a method that allows us determining border effects with a high degree of accuracy in the absence of intra-national trade data. We show how to improve the estimation of border effects with the example of France and Germany using data on regional transportation flows. Our results indicate that France trades about eight times more and Germany about three times more with itself than with other EU countries, respectively, compared to the predictions of the gravity equation. JEL no. F15     

New Borders and Trade Flows: A Gravity Model Analysis of the Baltic States

The objective of this paper is to provide evidence on the effects of an economic and political union by studying the trade flows of the three Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania after the breakup of the Soviet Union. We specify and estimate a gravity model of exports for the Nordic countries which enables us to determine the size and direction of trade flows in the Baltic states had they not been affected by the political institutions of the Soviet Union. Our results suggest that Baltic foreign trade was not only reduced significantly but also diverted to the members of the former Soviet Union. Consistent with our estimates, we also find that these consequences of the former political union are quickly dissipating, and the Baltic countries are increasing their share of exports to the European Union and the U.S.     

跨境数据流动规则对服务贸易成本的影响

数据流动已成为贸易规则谈判的重要议题。通过构建RTA(区域贸易协定)跨境数据流动规则深度指数和测算双边服务贸易成本,实证分析跨境数据流动规则对服务贸易成本的影响。研究发现,在理论机制上,跨境数据流动规则通过减少监管分歧和促进服务贸易数字化降低服务贸易成本。实证结果表明,缔结跨境数据流动规则和跨境数据流动规则深度的增加均会显著降低服务贸易成本。分规则类型来看,数据便利类条款、数据保护类条款、数据流动类条款和数据例外类条款深度的增加均能降低服务贸易成本;从不同经济发展水平匹配的国家对来看,发展中国家之间、发达国家与发展中国家之间跨境数据流动规则的缔结和规则深度的增加均能降低服务贸易成本。     

AFTA and the Asian Crisis: Help or Hindrance to ASEAN Intra‐Regional Trade?

Using a modified gravity equation, this paper examines ASEAN intra- and extra-regional bias in bilateral trade flows and how these relationships have altered over time. We pay particular attention to the periods before and after the signing of AFTA as well as the crucial years prior to and following the Asian crisis. Given the 'openness' of ASEAN countries we consider not only intra-ASEAN trade but also the effect of AFTA on non-members. We find that trade flows were not significantly affected in the years immediately following the signing of the AFTA agreement and also that the traditional stance of ASEAN countries to outward-oriented economic activity has not been significantly damaged but rather stimulated by the AFTA process and/or the Asian economic crisis. We do find, however, that that one effect of the Asian economic crisis was to generate a stronger desire to source imports from within the region.     

International Saving, Investment and Trade

Feldstein and Horioka (Econ J 90:314–329, 1980) observed that saving and investment move closely together in the major OECD countries. This finding is a puzzle if national economies are characterized by one sector neoclassical production functions—with diminishing returns to capital, a high level of savings in a country should create an incentive to export capital. In this paper, we show that this incentive disappears in the presence of multiple sectors with differing capital intensities. In a high saving country, national capital can be absorbed domestically without a decline in its marginal product through a shift in the sectoral composition of national production towards capital intensive sectors. This is nothing but the well-known Rybczynski effect. We present a modified version of the standard Heckscher–Ohlin (HO) Model to show that very small barriers to capital mobility are enough to force national savings to stay within the country of origin. We also argue that, while the assumptions of this model may appear special, they are not unrealistic for the developed countries in the Feldstein Horioka study. Some historical economic trends are also consistent with the picture presented in this paper. Finally, the paper shows that the conventional insights from the one sector neoclassical model can be completely overturned in a multi-sector setting when technological differences are introduced.

从制度经济学看宁波外贸优势

主流经济学在解释国际贸易原因时,都未考虑制度因素对形成国际贸易优势的影响,将制度视为既定的或者制度的影响可以忽略不计,因而在解释现实世界中暴露出许多局限性。文章从分析宁波外贸优势原因出发,从产权制度、政府政策、人力资本和产业集群等方面分析了制度对宁波外贸发展     

The Gravity Equation in International Trade in Services

The main purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of various factors on bilateral services trade, relative to that on bilateral goods trade. To accomplish this purpose, using the standard gravity model, we ran regressions on bilateral services trade and goods trade between 10 OECD member countries and other economies (including OECD member and nonmember countries) for the years 1999 and 2000. One main and interesting result is that services trade is better predicted by gravity equations than goods trade. Another interesting result is that there is a complementary relationship between goods exports and services imports. JEL no. F10, F20, L51, F80     

Transportation and The International Trade of Eastern and Southern Africa

We use new data on transportation to determine its effect on the international trade of eastern and southern Africa (ESA). The effects were estimated with gravity models using alternative techniques to check for robustness. Freight forwarders provided information on freight charges (price), average duration of shipment (time) and variability in time. The new transportation variables and the more commonly used distance variable appear to have smaller effects overall than some previous research indicated, although our distance coefficient is identical to that of Coulibaly and Fotagné for West Africa. In contrast to other research critical of distance as a proxy for transport impediments, we find similar effects from distance and our measure of transport time, but both of these variables have significantly larger coefficients than price and variability. Landlocked ESA countries are twice as dependent on trade as the whole region after accounting for control variables, but they are not significantly more affected by changes in price and time, and they are less affected by distance and variability. The relative size of the time coefficients suggests that measures to lessen delays in shipping, for instance, faster border clearance, might encourage more trade than cost cutting measures that lowered price proportionately.     

我国贸易顺差结构、成因及国际比较

文章总结改革开放以来我国贸易顺差的三个阶段,分析近几年贸易顺差的结构性特征。据此认为,我国贸易顺差实际是一种转移顺差,是国际间产业转移以及资本项目顺差隐形转移的必然产物,是我国劳动力价格、国内产能过剩及内需不足、配额限制取消等因素综合作用的结果。提出从顺差总量、贸易不平衡度以及顺差与GDP之比的国际比较上看,中国贸易顺差并不像一些研究人员所认为的那样严重。     

Linguistic and Religious Influences on Foreign Trade: Evidence from East Asia*

Using a modified gravity model and the cross‐sectional data of East Asian economies, the present paper presents evidence that supports the view that the effect of distance‐related transaction costs on trade tends to fall over time. Overall religious influence on foreign trade exists in the post‐Cold War period but not during the Cold War period. The effects of language on inter‐regional trade and of religion on intra‐regional trade both weaken over time. In all cases, religion tends to have more significant influences on intra‐regional trade than language, and language tends to exert more significant influences on inter‐regional trade than religion. Finally, from 1985 to 1995 there is an indication that: (i) English becomes more important for inter‐regional trade; (ii) Bahasa, English and Khmer become less important for intra‐regional trade; and (iii) Chinese plays an increasing role in both intra‐regional and inter‐regional trade.     

Welfare State, Market Imperfections, and International Trade

Within a two-sector-two-country model of trade with aggregate scale economies and unionisation, a more generous welfare state in one country increases welfare in that country and can have positive spillover effects on the other. Furthermore, synchronised expansions of social security are more welfare enhancing than unilateral ones. Our results counter the fears that a race to the bottom in social standards may result from the ‘shrinking-tax-base’ entailed by international capital mobility. While affecting trade patterns and income distribution, capital mobility interacts with welfare state policies in increasing welfare, even when capital flows out of the country that initiates the shock.

Measuring Multi‐Membership in Economic Integration and Its Trade Impact: A Comparative Study of ECOWAS and SADC

One of the intriguing aspects of African regional trade agreements (RTAs) is the extent of multi‐membership, where many African countries are members of more than one RTA. Using a gravity model for 25 countries and the years 1980‐2006, we measure the extent of multi‐membership and compare its impact in two major African regional blocs, Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) and Southern Africa Development Community (SADC). We find that the impact of multi‐membership critically depends on the characteristics of the multi‐membership of regional integration initiatives. We find a positive impact if an additional membership complements the integration process of the original regional integration initiative: overlapping memberships had a much stronger and significant positive effect on bilateral trade within ECOWAS compare with an insignificant impact within the SADC.     

东亚双边出口贸易流量与潜力:贸易引力模型的实证研究

本文利用东亚1995-2004年面板数据建立东亚贸易引力模型,对东亚区域内出口贸易流量的影响因素和潜力进行研究。研究显示,经济规模、中国-中国香港地区更紧密经贸关系(CEPA)、中国-东盟自由贸易区(ACFTA)、经济制度、经济发展水平差距、国际直接投资、国家间地理距离和金融危机是东亚双边出口贸易流量的主要影响因素。     

Exploring the Intensive and Extensive Margins of World Trade

World trade evolves at two margins. Where a bilateral trading relationship already exists it may increase through time (intensive margin). But trade may also increase if a trading bilateral relationship is newly established between countries that have not traded with each other in the past (extensive margin). We provide an empirical dissection of post–World War II growth in manufacturing world trade along these two margins. We propose a “corner-solutions version” of the gravity model to explain movements on both margins. A Tobit estimation of this model resolves the so-called “distance puzzle”. It also finds more convincing evidence than recent literature that WTO-membership enhances trade. JEL no. F12, F15     

Distribution dynamics: stratification, polarization, and convergence among OECD economies, 1870-1992

Using a distribution dynamics approach, the growth experience of 17 OECD economies is investigated. After explaining the distribution dynamics approach, the empirical analysis examines both the observed period dynamics and the unique long-run equilibrium associated with three periods. This study suggests persistence and stratification, not convergence, characterized the pre-1914 regime, whereas convergence was the key feature of the post-war regime. However, a larger sample of OECD economies in the post-war period indicates that convergence was primarily a feature of the Golden Age and in the post-Golden Age period separation, polarization, and divergence came to the fore.