The pollution terms of trade and its five components

Based on two extensions, this paper proposes a re-appraisal of the concept of the pollution terms of trade (PTT) introduced by Antweiler (1996). First, detailed data allows capturing the effect of differences in emission intensities across countries and over time. Second, relying on Johnson and Noguera (2012), the revised PTT index controls for trade in intermediate goods and is based on value-added rather than gross output figures. Applied to a database for SO₂ emission intensities for 62 developed and developing countries over the 1990–2000 period, it turns out that the first extension has a larger empirical importance than the second one. The global pattern is one in which the major rich economies exhibit a PTT index below one (higher pollution intensity in imports than in exports). Trade imbalances tend to exacerbate this asymmetry, allowing rich economies to further offshore their pollution through trade.     

Structural Estimation of Variety Gains from Trade Integration in Asia

This article studies the variety gains of trade integration in Asia. Adopting a heterogeneous firm model of trade of monopolistic competition allowed us to estimate not only the welfare gains because of country specialisation, but also the variety gains arising from trade integration. The underlying structural parameters were estimated econometrically, based on a large panel of firm‐level data for the Asian economies (ORIANA). Our empirical findings suggest that, when relaxing the assumption of firm homogeneity and accounting for export market entry costs, the gains from trade integration are higher than in conventional models with representative firms.     

Intertemporal preference parameters for some European monetary union countries

In the European Monetary Union, the estimation and analysis of preference parameters in its members is of special interest because possible differences could help us to understand why a common monetary policy could have different effects on the different economies involved. In this article, we have focused our attention on the elasticity of intertemporal substitution, one of the key preference parameters in intertemporal macroeconomic models. Several studies have shown a possible underestimation of such elasticity for different countries. It is common practice to estimate the parameter using only nondurable goods and services consumption data, without referring to the flow of services generated by durable consumption. This is only admissible if the intratemporal utility can be separated among the different consumption components. Our first objective is, therefore, to test the assumption of intratemporal separability for a selection of European countries (Germany, Spain and France), and then to analyse the effect of durable consumption on the estimated values of the intertemporal elasticity of substitution of these countries, our ultimate goal. Knowledge of such elasticity will enable us to characterise how saving in these economies reacts to variations in the real interest rate.     

TRADEMARK SALES,ENTRY, AND THE VALUE OF REPUTATION*

We develop an infinite‐horizon, overlapping‐generations model of reputation in which consumers base willingness to pay for agent services on past performance summarized by a trademark. We show that when trademarks can be sold, successful firms capture the full value of their reputations upon sale but receive smaller premia for good performance while active as service providers. With discounting, all agents are worse off with trademark trade. Taking entry cost into account, we show that trademark trade typically reduces entry. When entry costs are high, welfare is increased by prohibiting such trade.     

International Provision of Trade Services, Trade, and Fragmentation

This paper examines the special role that trade liberalization in service industries can play in stimulating not only trade in services but also in goods. International trade in goods requires inputs from several services industries (trade services, such as transportation, insurance, and finance) in order to complete and facilitate international transactions. Restriction on the ability of national service providers to provide these services across borders and within foreign countries creates additional costs and barriers to international trade above those that would arise in otherwise comparable intranational exchange. As a result, trade liberalization in services can yield benefits, by facilitating trade in goods, that are larger than one might expect from analysis of the services trade alone. This paper explores this idea using simple theoretical models to specify the relationships between services trade and goods trade. The paper also notes the role of services trade in a model of international industrial fragmentation, where production processes can be separated across locations but at some cost in terms of additional service inputs. The incentives for such fragmentation can be larger across countries than within countries, owing to the greater differences in factor prices and technologies available. However, the service costs of international fragmentation can also be larger, especially if regulations and restrictions impede the international provision of services. As a result, trade liberalization in services can also stimulate fragmentation of production of both goods and services, thus increasing international trade and the gains from trade even further.     

Trade Policy in the Presence of Economies of Scale and Product Variety*

It is well known that laissez faire may not be the ‘first-best’ policy in a closed economy where economies of scale are present. Corden has shown that this conclusion can carry over into an open economy, though under his assumption that imported goods are perfect substitutes for home-produced goods, interference with international trade could not raise real income. We have shown that where there are economies of scale, and imported goods are not identical to the home produced goods, interference with trade could raise real national income, though such a form of intervention would not normally be optimal. Further, it could even be desirable to support home production of more than one ‘variety’. Measurements of ‘costs of protection’ that aggregate several varieties into one may mislead not only regarding the size of the cost but even regarding its sign.     

Beyond Dutch disease

How does the deterioration of rule of law in Russia in recent years affect its ability to move away from an export pattern dominated by natural resources? We investigate this question using three datasets for Russia's bilateral trade relations for goods, services and investment at disaggregated level with its partner countries over the world. Our empirical analysis shows that the deterioration of the rule of law in Russia since 2003 has affected the long‐run trade performance of Russia in sophisticated and technology‐intensive manufactured goods, as well as its inward investments with advanced economies. It is precisely this type of trade that Russia should nurture to diversify away from hydrocarbons export dependence. Our statistical analysis also shows that Russia remains to a large extent an outlier within the multilateral trading system. It exports disproportionately less to partner countries which are or had become members of the WTO over our period of analysis. Russia's trade appears to have been negatively affected by the accession of these countries to the WTO. Russia itself finally acceded to the WTO in July 2012 amidst signs of a modest improvement of its rule‐of‐law indicators.     

Vertical Innovation and Catching-Up: Implications of EU Integration for CEECs-5

We analyze the role of vertical innovation in trade patterns for developing economies trading with technologically advanced countries. A model is presented where the international diffusion of knowledge, promoted by economic integration, is the source of a technological catching up and leads to a convergence in the quality of traded goods, with a positive effect on exports. We then turn our attention on the evolution of trade between the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs-5) and their European Union partner countries, assessing whether economic integration has increase the quality of the goods produced. For the period 1995–2005, we find evidence of the increasing role of intra-industry trade and vertical differentiation and a process of specialization in higher quality products, especially in the medium- and high-skill sectors.

Trade in goods and services: Two sides of the same coin?

This study analyzes the interrelationship between goods and services in production and trade using the most recent input–output tables for all OECD countries. It first describes the role of services in production and trade in goods. Next, it proposes two models for analyzing the impact of services trade liberalization on industrial structure. The first captures the role of trade in tasks when countries have different technology i) in production of services; and ii) in organizing production. The latter has to the author's knowledge not been analyzed in the trade literature before. Countries with superior organizational technology (e.g. Japan) will strengthen their comparative advantage in manufacturing following trade liberalization in services. The second model explores the interrelationship between intermediate goods and services i) when they are substitutes; and ii) when they are complements. In both models the gains from trade liberalization is non-linear in trade costs. Going the last mile of liberalization has a much larger impact than taking the first steps.     

An assessment of the Europe agreements’ effects on bilateral trade, GDP, and welfare

The so-called Europe Agreements had been enacted in the 1990s to initiate the integration of goods markets between the 15 EU incumbent economies as of 1995 and 10 potential entrants located in Central and Eastern Europe. This paper evaluates the trade, GDP, and welfare effects of these agreements by means of structural analysis of a bilateral trade flow model. The results support three conclusions. First, the agreements exerted significant positive effects on goods trade between the EU15 incumbents and the CEEC and, at the same time, they induced trade redirection from other countries. Second, EU15 GDP responded by an increase of much less than 1% while that in the 10 CEEC increased by several percent in response to the agreements. Third, the effects on welfare were moderate in the EU15 but amounted to more double-digit percentage changes in the involved CEEC.     

Determinants of International Trade Flows in Travel and Passenger Services*

In the past decade there has been a great increase in interest in trade in services. This paper estimates the determinants of trade flows for two service industries, travel and passenger transportation services, for 16 OECD countries Traditional and more recent models of import demand and demand for export functions are utilized The empirical results indicate similarity between trade in goods and trade in services. Price competitiveness is an important factor in determining the trade flows in travel services and like trade in manufactured goods, exchange rate variations have some influence on the volume of travel and passenger transportation services     

On the Causality between Trade Credits and Imports: Evidence and Possible Implication for Trade Penalties on Debt Defaults

Abstract

This study investigates the association between trade credits and imports of developing countries. Made available by its creditors, the main function of trade credits is to facilitate cross-border transactions of goods and services. This study finds that the reliance of imports on trade credits varies across regions and income: towards the end of the 1990s, the trade credits to imports ratio ranged from 0.20 for East Asia & the Pacific to 0.87 for Africa, and from 0.24 for high-income countries to 0.79 for low-income countries. Applying panel and cross-country estimation, we find that past trade credits help predict current imports, but past imports do not alter the future path of trade credits. Further, the positive association between trade credits and imports is larger for countries more dependent upon trade credits. The findings support the notion that countries make debt repayments to avoid any potential disruption on the line of trade credits. We also find that the trade credits penalty could materialize within less than two quarters.     

HOW MUCH DOES GEOGRAPHY DEFLECT SERVICES TRADE? CANADIAN ANSWERS

We estimate geographic barriers to trade in nine service categories for Canada's provinces from 1997 to 2007 with novel high‐quality bilateral provincial trade data. The border directly reduces average provincial trade with the United States relative to interprovincial trade to 2.4% of its borderless level. Incorporating multilateral resistance reduces foreign trade relative to interprovincial to 0.1% of its frictionless potential. Geography reduces services trade some seven times more than goods trade overall. Surprisingly, intraprovincial (local) trade in services and goods is equally deflected upward, implying that the border increases interprovincial trade much more in services than goods.     

Intra-tourism trade,income distribution and tourism endowment: an econometric investigation

Empirical investigation (Nowak et al., 2012) points out that vertical intra-industry trade (VIIT) in Europe is the dominant type of intra-industry trade (IIT) in the tourism sector. This article is the first in tourism literature to test separately the determinants of vertically and horizontally differentiated services, using the most recent models in the theory of IIT. We examine bilateral trade among all trading partners of the sample of European countries, covering the period from 2000 to 2008. We show that differences in gross domestic product per capita and the income-distribution overlap, as well as cultural proximity, are the most significant driving forces behind VIIT for European countries. Geographic distance has a negative effect, whereas specific tourism endowments and relative size of the economies are less conclusive. These results confirm theory predictions and most of the empirical findings related to the pattern of VIIT for the manufacturing sector. As expected, we find that determinants of VIIT cannot explain horizontal intra-industry trade in tourism. We suggest two alternative methods of estimation: generalized least squares logistic function and the fractional logit estimator. We conclude that there are common factors explaining IIT in the manufacturing and tourism trades.     

The Division and Size of Gains from Liberalization in Service Networks*

If two disjoint country service networks involving a small and large country are connected as part of international liberalization in the presence of network externalities, the per capita gain for the small country from access to a large network will be large, and the per capita gain for the large country will be small. In contrast to goods, the benefits of liberalization in network‐related services are more likely to be approximately equally divided between large and small countries than is true of trade in goods, where benefits accrue disproportionately to the small country. We also argue that non‐cooperation in network‐related services trade may involve more extreme retaliation than suggested for trade in goods by the optimal tariff literature, so that relative to a non‐cooperative outcome, gains from liberalization in network‐related services become larger than from liberalization in goods. We develop simple models which we use for numerical examples showing these points, along with an empirical implementation for global telecoms liberalization for the US, Europe, Canada, and the rest of the world using the framework developed in the paper. This shows similar proportional gains to regions, consistent with the theme of the paper that goods and services liberalization differ.     

Country size,income level and intra-industry trade

This study investigates three testable hypotheses of intra-industry trade., It begins by developing a theoretical, two country model., The model explicitly includes two goods: differentiated products and homogeneous goods., Then three empirical hypotheses are derived as follows., The share of intra-industry trade will be large: (a) if the two economies are of similar size, (b) if the capital-labour endowment ratio of both countries is similar, and (c) if the total size of the two economies is large., From the cross-sectional analysis using 1970–1994 data, results are obtained that support the model., Furthermore, the results are confirmed using panel analysis on the pooled data.,     

Explaining Export Performance through Inputs: Evidence from Aggregated Cross‐country Firm‐level Data

Which trade barrier related to intermediate inputs forms a greater burden on the export performance of firms in developing countries? Using aggregated cross‐country firm‐level data covering 43 mostly developing economies, this paper estimates the marginal importance of the impact of various intermediate input trade cost barriers, namely tariffs, non‐tariff barriers (NTBs) and services barriers, on firms' export behavior. In a cross‐sectoral setting, this paper takes the firm's export performance in goods as a central focus to study the effects of these different trade barriers through the exporting firm's choice of use of intermediate inputs. The results show that the most significant trade barriers on inputs that impede export performance in developing countries are mainly NTBs and restrictions of services.     

Migration,trade and spillover effects

This paper identifies a new channel through which migrants can affect the import demand of goods in the host country. In migrating from origin to destination country, migrants observe a change in the price of the bundle of consumable goods. In particular, the migration decision can imply a reduction in the price of imported goods for the consumption bundle of migrants: emigration towards less (tariff) protected countries allows the consumption of products that were prohibitively protected in the origin countries of migrants. To test this channel we estimate the import demand effect of migrant groups coming from third high (tariff) protected countries. Our empirical results strongly confirm this channel and suggest a new perspective about how migration can affect welfare and trade in destination countries.     

Aid for trade and international transactions in goods and services

The empirical literature on aid for trade (AfT) mainly considers its effects on merchandise trade and investment. In this paper, we provide an in‐depth analysis of the relationship between AfT and trade in services using both aggregate and bilateral data. We find a statistically weak effect of AfT on both goods and services trade in our aggregate analysis once we account for endogeneity in the AfT–trade relationship. In contrast, the bilateral analysis suggests that AfT, in particular that allocated to services activities, especially economic infrastructure, has a positive effect on recipients’ merchandise exports to donor countries. This novel finding is robust across different lag structures and provides evidence of complementarities between services AfT and goods trade.     

Capitalist Financial Processes and the Instability of Capitalism

Neoclassical economic theory asserts that, when market forces determine the prices of goods and services, resources are allocated most efficiently, economies grow faster and populations enjoy higher standards of living. It also argues that free trade helps to promote an efficient allocation of resources, allowing countries to specialize in the production of goods and services in which they have a comparative advantage. This article takes a contrary view and hypothesizes that unfettered market forces will harm Caricom countries, given their present level of development. It therefore recommends that Caribbean governments play an active role in economic affairs to effect a more socially efficient use of resources and to promote the growth of the manufacturing and agricultural sectors.