Potential demand and external trade

Summary Both in theoretical and empirical studies of international trade relative prices play a dominant role. Standard international trade theory asserts that under certain conditions the price mechanism may lead to an equilibrium between demand for and supply of goods from and to different countries. For short periods, some relevant conditions may not be fulfilled; in that case other adjustments such as changes in non price conditions may equate demand and supply or, alternatively, disequilibria may exist. Direct statistical evidence on non price conditions, excess demand and excess supply is scarce.This paper describes a partly indirect approach of the not price conditioned trade fluctuations. The basic model assumes that these fluctuations are largely dependent on pressure of demand, which is defined as the tension between potential demand and potential supply. In this way both exports and imports are divided in a potential component, dependent on relative prices, and a pressure induced component. The other main assumption is that actual domestic demand changes according to the demand function. Combining these relations, potential demand for domestic products is the sum of domestic demand and potential export demand minus potential import demand. Potential supply is assumed to be a constant fraction of the exogeneously given production capacity.The model is used for an iterative approximation of the changes in potential demand and pressure of demand for the Netherlands. For this purpose estimations for actual exports and actual imports of commodities are derived from the model. In the initial estimations, potential demand is approximated by means of actual demand, during consecutive rounds the results of the preceding stages are used. After three rounds the coefficients are stable. The values calculated for the yearly changes in potential demand are for most years in concordance with a priori expectations. For the reference period, the explanatory power of the computed pressure of demand is either of about the same quality as that of conventional pressure variables or better.     

Methodology and application of price analysis

Summary This paper deals with the relationship between the development of unit costs and prices of production factors and the development of the prices of final products. The investigation of these relationships during the various stages of production in the economic process, an activity called price analysis, may contribute to the analysis of inflation. In this respect the influence of the wage rate on the development of the prices of final expenditure is more considerable than the influence of the prices of imports of goods and services. However, taking into account the modifications in the structure of production, particularly regarding labour productivity and import substitution, the main explanation of the price increase in 1976 compared with 1970 of three categories of final expenditure,viz. exports of goods and services, private consumption expenditure and gross fixed capital formation of enterprises is to be found in the unit costs of imports of goods and services rather than in the unit labour costs. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 17th General Conference of the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, Gouvieux, France, August 17–22, 1981. The author thanks C.B.S. staff members for many fruitful discussions and he is grateful to a referee for his helpful comments.     

Indonesia's Non-Oil Export Performance During the Economic Crisis: Distinguishing Price Trends from Quantity Trends

Despite an enormous currency depreciation, the growth rate of Indonesia's non-oil exports, measured in dollars, did not accelerate during the first two years of the Asian crisis. In fact, during the second year of the crisis non-oil export value dropped sharply. This paper demonstrates that the main reason for the decline in the dollar value of non-oil exports was a collapse of export prices. Non-oil export dollar prices fell 26% between the second quarter of 1997 and the second quarter of 1999. Measured at constant prices, non-oil exports grew 24% and manufactured exports 31% during this period. Non-oil import prices fell by roughly the same amount as non-oil export prices during the crisis, with little change in the non-oil terms of trade. The decline in the price of traded goods significantly reduced the magnitude of the real exchange rate depreciation experienced by Indonesia.     

The Leontief paradox in a multi-country setting: Comments

Conclusions Apart from the commodity mix effect, exports, imports consumption and production respond identically to changes in relative capital endowment, regardless of whether one refers to physical capital, human capital or total capital. Hence, when allowing technology and product mix to vary, one cannot distinguish between export goods and import goods in terms of capital intensity. These conclusions are still in agreement with Hirsch [1977, p. 418] who argues “Poor countries export low capital-intensive and import high capital-intensive goods, while rich countries import low capital-intensive and export high capital-intensive goods.” The only response that is significantly different is due to the commodity mix effect.     

中国纸和纸板出口价格的影响因素分析

基于2000—2020年中国纸和纸板出口相关数据，运用多元回归模型实证分析影响中国纸和纸板出口价格的因素。研究发现，废纸进口价格、其他竞争者价格、出口集中度、汇率是影响中国纸和纸板出口价格的关键因素。对中国3类主要出口品种的异质性分析显示，箱纸板出口价格的主要影响因素为废纸进口价格、资金成本、出口集中度、汇率，涂布印刷纸出口价格受到木浆进口价格、全球涂布印刷纸需求量、对外贸易依存度、汇率的影响，包装盒纸出口价格受到废纸进口价格、对外贸易依存度、汇率、环境保护的共同影响。基于此提出提升纸和纸板出口竞争力的对策建议。     

Trade elasticities in transition countries

Trade elasticities play a crucial role in translating economic analysis of external adjustment issues into macroeconomic policy. Trade demand elasticities allow policy makers to draw important conclusions about exchange rate misalignments or trade balance changes. This paper endeavors to bring transition countries, namely those from Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, into the universe of estimated price and activity elasticities of trade volumes. The estimated results imply that the traditional ‘Marshall-Lerner’ condition is not satisfied for transition countries. The estimated price elasticities of export and import demands perform fairly well in predicting out-of-sample changes in trade balance ratios for a broad set of transition countries. In the long run, however, exports and imports are mainly driven by income changes.     

外商直接投资对我国服务贸易的影响研究——基于1982～2010年时间序列数据的实证分析

本文基于向量自回归(VAR)模型,利用我国1982～2010年度的经济数据,对我国外商直接投资对我国服务贸易的影响进行实证分析,结果表明:外商直接投资与我国服务贸易进口、出口之间存在协整关系;服务贸易进口与FDI存在双向的因果关系。无论从长期或短期来看,外商直接投资对我国服务贸易进出口的效应均为正。基于此,我国应制定相关吸引外资的政策,重视服务贸易人才培养,并促进我国货物贸易出口与服务贸易出口协调发展,进而发挥货物贸易出口对服务贸易出口的带动作用。     

Effects of China's Structural Change on the Exports of East Asian Economies

The Chinese economy is slowing down and is in the midst of a structural transformation from export‐led and investment‐led growth to domestic demand‐led and consumption‐led growth. While there are widespread concerns among China's trading partners about the effect of the slowdown in China's growth on their exports, China's structural changes are also likely to have a significant impact: for example, China will import fewer machines and more cosmetics. The central objective of the present paper is to empirically examine the effect of China's structural transformation on the exports of East Asian economies, which have close trade linkages with China. We find that economies that have failed to increase the share of consumption goods in their exports to China have suffered larger declines in their quantities of exports to China. In addition, economies that have suffered losses in their shares of China's parts and components imports have faced reductions in their shares in China's total imports.     

Income and Price Elasticities of China＇s Exports

The appearance of new product varieties and improvements in the quality of goods have both played key roles in the rapid growth of China's exports. However, these two important elements have not been formally integrated into the demand equations for China's exports. As we demonstrate in this paper, income elasticity will be underestimated if new varieties of goods and quality improvements are omitted in price index and quantity index calculations, which are necessary for estimating the export demand function. Moreover, the faster new product varieties enter export markets, the greater the underestimation will be. In this paper, we develop an export demand equation that takes into account new product varieties and improvements in quality, and then calculate the demand function for China's exports using the data from 1992 to 2006. According to our estimation, the short‐term income elasticity of demand for China's exports is approximately 2.34, and the short‐term price elasticity is approximately –0.65. Our estimation predicts an increase in China's export value in the case of an RMB appreciation or export rebate rates reduction in the short term, due to the low price elasticity of China's exports, whose absolute value is less than 1. Our findings are novel and could have significant policy implications.     

An Investigation of the Effects of Prices and Exchange Rates on Trade Flows in East Asia

This paper investigates the dynamic response of imports and exports to changes in domestic prices, foreign prices and real effective exchange rates for Korea, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. A vector autoregressive model and cointegration analysis are used to study the long-run relationships and the short-run dynamics of these variables. The vector error-correction model indicates that in almost all cases, domestic and foreign prices have a larger impact on the trade flows than the real effective exchange rates. We cannot find any significant difference in the response time of import demand to shocks in prices and exchange rates; however, the response time for export supply varies among countries.     

能源价格冲击对中国贸易结构的传递效应——基于投入产出法的实证研究

本文利用与进出口价格相关联的投入产出模型,计算模拟了国际能源价格冲击对中国贸易结构的传递效应。结果表明,能源价格冲击提高了货物出口和进口比重,使货物、服务出口比例更加不合理。具体而言,对初级产品、其他工业品、机电产品、高新技术产品以及各类服务占货物或服务出口和进口的比重具有同方向的作用效果,出口比重提高,进口比重也提高,而反之亦然。虽然能源价格冲击恶化了出口结构,优化了进口结构,但长期而言弊大于利,对我国贸易结构调整起到一定的阻碍作用。     

United States Demand for Indonesian Plywood 1

Indonesia's exports of plywood are the largest in the world and a leading source of foreign exchange earnings. Although the industry's growth has been rapid, several studies indicate that it has been subsidised both directly and indirectly. What are the prospects for Indonesia to offset these subsidies by raising plywood prices as its share of key import markets grows? This paper sheds light on this question by analyzing econometrically the United States' imports of Indonesian plywood from July 1979 to December 1986, using a monthly import demand model. The results suggest that Indonesia's rapid expansion into the US plywood market has been due primarily to its low plywood prices, and that attempts to raise prices relative to those of competing export regions would result in significant reductions in market share.     

Impacts of trade liberalisation on aggregate import in Bangladesh: An ARDL Bounds test approach

Bangladesh has been liberalising its trade regime extensively since 1992 in order to achieve higher trade performance and GDP growth. However, despite the long period of liberalisation, imports are still growing faster than exports, increasing the trade deficit. Trade liberalisation is considered a crucial contributory factor. The paper examines the impact of trade liberalisation on the aggregate import in Bangladesh, using the ARDL Bounds Test approach with annual time series data from 1972–1973 to 2004–2005. Empirical results suggest that trade liberalisation through reduction of the import duty rate increases the aggregate import substantially in the short run, but insignificantly in the long run. Trade liberalisation using simplification of non-tariff measures shows a significant but low positive impact on the aggregate import in the long run. Liberalisation interaction with price decreases imports slightly hence improves the trade balance, while interaction with income increases imports slightly hence worsens the trade balance. An increase in imports is mainly stimulated by an increase in income. Moreover, higher income elasticity compared to price elasticity indicates that an effort to maintain imports at the desired level by increasing import duty could be counter balanced and ineffective. Therefore, a consistent policy to promote not only consumption of domestically produced products, but investment, production, and backward linkage industries is essential in order to improve the trade balance and GDP growth in Bangladesh.     

进口贸易提高了中国制造行业出口技术含量吗?

中国自发达国家进口以中间品和资本品为主,在全球垂直专业化分工中参与程度较深。本文利用出口收入指数方法计算结果显示,2001～2010年中国制造行业的进口收入指数高于出口收入指数,贸易结构表现为进口高技术含量产品、出口低技术含量产品的特征。面板数据计量检验结果表明,中国自发达国家进口显著地促进了中国出口产品的技术水平,而且这一促进作用在高垂直专业化程度行业、高R&D经费支出行业更为明显。我国制造业应着力改善国内的要素条件,加大R&D经费投入,加快物质资本折旧和更新速度,提高国内行业对进口技术溢出的吸收能力。     

Sectoral Price Movements under the Yen Appreciation

This paper analyzes the movements of tradable goods prices in Japan. The import price indices and the export price indices are matched with the domestic wholesale price indices at the most detailed level available for Japan, and the pricing behavior in the yen appreciation period (1985–1995) is examined. In the import-side analysis, we investigate how far the price movements under currency appreciation deviate from the law of one price. We find that internal–external price differentials have surprisingly expanded for most of the products since 1985. For a number of commodities, the import prices do not decline as far as the exchange rate appreciates, and the domestic wholesale prices do not decrease as far as the import prices decline. Although the expanded price gaps cannot necessarily be interpreted as a result of deliberate trade barriers, they suggest that some sort of handicap is imposed on imported goods and the large fraction of rent generated by the yen appreciation is intercepted in the middle. In the export-side analysis, the relationship between the globalization of firms' activities and export pass-through is investigated. Our cross-sectional regression analysis indicates that the export path-through rates tend to be low when the value added ratios of foreign production of Japanese firms are high. Low export pass-through under currency appreciation is often interpreted as a result of firms' attempts to keep their foreign market share, but the globalization of firms' activities may be another important factor in lowering the pass-through.J. Japan Int. Econ.,December 1997,11(4), pp. 611–641. Department of Economics, Keio University, 2-15-45 Mita, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108, Japan.     

Trade effects of silver price fluctuations in 19th-century China: A macro approach

We assess the role of silver price fluctuations in Chinese trade and GDP during the late Qing dynasty, when China still had a bimetallic (silver/copper) monetary system, in which silver was mostly used for international trade. Using a structural VAR (SVAR) with blockwise recursive identification, we identify the impact of silver price shocks on the Chinese economy from 1867, when trade data became available, to 1910, one year before the Qing dynasty collapsed. We find that silver price shocks had a sizable impact on both imports and exports but only a very minor effect on the trade balance, only a marginal impact on growth, and almost no effect on domestic prices. Stronger effects were partly mitigated by inelastic export quantities. Generally, the effect of silver price shocks, while considerable, was only short-lived, displaying no persistence in either direction. We find that the bimetallic system in Qing China might have mitigated a potential positive effect of silver depreciation but did not reverse the effect, which – contrary to claims made in the previous literature – was responsible for neither the worsening trade balance nor the inflation and the quickly increasing imports that occurred during our sample period.     

Exchange Rate Variability and the Macro-economy: Evidence from Developing and Developed Countries

Abstract

Using annual data, the paper studies the time-series evidence regarding the allocation of fluctuations in the exchange rate between demand components, real growth, and price inflation in a sample of developing and advanced countries. The evidence reveals patterns of interaction between the macro-economy and exchange rate variability. Across developing countries, appreciation decreases the cost of imports and price inflation, while depreciation shrinks the output supply, indicating high dependency on imported goods. The reduction in output supply correlates with higher inflation and an increase in the import value. In contrast, the evidence of the negative effect of currency appreciation on output growth is more prevalent across advanced countries, while depreciation stimulates competitiveness, resulting in higher demand for exports, investment and consumption. Across developing countries, exchange rate variability decreases trend real growth and increases trend price inflation. Across advanced countries, exchange rate variability decreases trend real growth while increasing the variability of price inflation and import growth. Minimizing variability of the exchange rate would be beneficial to sustain higher growth and reduce cyclical variability in developing and advanced countries.     

Exchange rates and the trade balance: the case of Singapore 1970 to 1996

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the real trade balance and the real exchange rate for bilateral trade in merchandise goods between Singapore and the USA on a quarterly basis over the period 1970 to 1996 using the partial reduced form model of Rose and Yellen (1989). We also hope to shed further light on what has become known as the ‘Singapore export puzzle’: the observation that, despite periods of rapid nominal and real appreciation of the Singapore dollar, export growth in aggregate has remained buoyant.Our findings suggest that the real exchange rate does not have a significant impact on the real bilateral trade balance for Singapore and the USA, thus confirming previous work which finds a weak relationship between changes in the exchange rate and changes in export and import prices and volumes for Singapore. We also found little evidence of a J-curve effect. Although positive coefficients linking real exports with lagged values of the real exchange rate might be indicative of ‘small country’ pricing by exporters in U.S. dollars, it is not clear that this is masking J-curve effects from an initial rise in import values as the home currency depreciates.     

国际贸易中计价货币选择的决定因素研究——基于微观视角的局部均衡分析

在既有的基于微观视角的包含两币的局部均衡模型中引入交易货币,发现国际贸易中计价货币选择的决定因素依次为:卖方市场结构、出口品差异化程度、出口国所占目标市场份额、其他出口商的计价策略和汇率的稳定性.在同质性商品的国际贸易中,计价货币的非同质性会导致货币垄断计价.其中,进口方货币的垄断计价地位较为稳定,出口方货币垄断计价情...     

Has pass-through to export prices risen? Evidence for Japan

This paper investigates the exchange rate response of Japanese export prices over the period 1980 through 2007 using sector-specific measures of the yen’s value relative to invoicing currencies. It finds a significant increase in the response of total export prices to the yen in the late 1990s. The rise in the total export price response is traced to increases in the exchange rate response of two key export sectors. These findings for Japanese exports are consistent with the documented decline in pass-through to OECD import prices and suggest the latter could originate with changes in export pricing behavior.