论比较优势的成本基础——从生产成本向“全成本”的拓展

贸易理论的历史演进表明,比较优势是一国参与国际分工和贸易的基本动因。古典、新古典和新贸易理论分别从劳动生产率、要素禀赋、生产规模等不同视角论证了基于生产成本的比较优势,进而可表达为"相对生产成本不等式"。随着制度、生态环境、"可持续性"等要素在国际贸易中日趋重要,使用制度要素所形成的交易成本、使用生态环境要素所形成的环境成本、耗费"可持续性"要素所形成的代际成本也逐步成为比较优势的成本基础。于是,可将使用或耗费广义要素的代价理解为"全成本",它构成了一国参与国际分工和贸易的比较优势的基础。     

Trade,Skill Biased Technical Change and Wage Inequality in South Africa

Trade openness influences the wage structure via technology adoption in middle income countries. Given the econometric challenges of handling endogenous trade and technology interaction, we offer an alternative quantification based on calibration of a general equilibrium model. We expand the standard open economy Ramsey model to include comparative advantage, technology adoption and skill bias influenced by investment decisions. The calibration constructs a reference path for South Africa and allows counterfactual analysis of trade openness. The quantitative results imply that trade effects via technology adoption and skill bias can be an important determinant of wage inequality in middle income countries.     

Fragmentation, Engel's Law, and Learning

This paper outlines the conditions under which trade is beneficial for a developing country's growth. A developing country suffers from two disadvantages: low income and a comparative disadvantage in the production of modern manufactured goods—goods which allow a high rate of human capital accumulation through learning by doing. Low income together with Engel's law imply that developing countries consume and produce very few modern goods in autarky and hence grow slowly. With international fragmentation of production, a developing country may find comparative advantage in the production of some stages of modern goods despite an absence of comparative advantage in the production of modern goods under “100% local content.” More resources can then be allocated to the modern goods sector leading to greater learning externalities and hence growth under free trade than in autarky.     

从大国经济增长阶段性看比较优势战略的适宜性

经济增长遵循着从"劳动投入驱动"向"资本投入驱动"再向"技术知识驱动"转变的规律,超大规模的国家不可能跨越其中任何阶段。在数量型经济增长阶段,如果大国以总体要素的比较优势介入国际分工,比较优势战略会呈现有限适宜性。而从数量型到质量型转变的阶段,无论是该理论的内部逻辑一致性还是该理论与现实经验的一致性,都显示出欠适宜性,并且大国经济特征强化了这种欠适宜性。在推进大国经济增长方式转变过程中,需要根据大国经济特征对比较优势发展战略理论进行必要的修正。     

Economic Takeoffs in a Dynamic Process of Globalization*

The paper develops a dynamic general‐equilibrium framework to illustrate that trade liberalization may speed up the process of globalization and industrialization by enabling a small open economy to reallocate production factors to modern export sectors where increasing returns to experience are present. The authors emphasize the role of knowledge in service activities related to the export of modern sector goods, which has the form of a public good that can be utilized in exporting of other modern sector goods. As a consequence of this knowledge accumulation, the economy begins to take off and exhibits more rapid rates of wage and output growth. The accumulation of knowledge also shifts comparative advantage in the modern sector to more service‐intensive goods, thus leading to a natural evolution of comparative advantage. These results lend theoretical support to the different development experiences in the 1960s between East Asia and Latin America.     

Technology and the dynamics of comparative advantage

This paper explores how trade affects innovation in a two‐country, two‐good, two‐factor Heckscher–Ohlin model with heterogeneous firms. Trade openness induces an increase in process innovation in both industries. The increase is stronger in the comparative advantage industry. Trade openness boosts prospective entrants' profits in that industry, which leads to further increases in product innovation. Trade liberalization generates a different relative impact on innovation across industries, depending on trade costs. When they are high (low), it increases process innovation relatively more in the comparative advantage (disadvantage) industry, leading to TFP divergence (convergence) across industries.     

The Voluntary (Private) Production of Public Goods,the Gains From Trade,and Comparative Advantage*

Any (finite) number of privately produced public goods are incorporated into a general trade-theory model of private goods and factors. Postulating Cournot-Nash behavior, a necessary condition for gainful trade is derived. Potential trade gains are related to the law of comparative advantage in private goods and the change in the underproduction of public goods. A sufficient condition is also proven. Trade gains/losses are compared for more or less populous economies. All the results have analogues in the literature on imperfect competition and/or increasing returns to scale.     

基于环境成本的比较优势理论及政策启示

在李嘉图模型中,将环境成本用追加的劳动投入来衡量,发现环保技术及环境成本对比较优势格局的修正.在H-O模型中,假定环境作为一种生产要素,则所形成的比较优势建立在包含环境资源真实价格的基础之上.社会环境成本与企业环境成本的差额,使"显示的比较优势"有可能偏离真实的比较优势,从而损害效率与公平.因此,要鼓励清洁技术创新,并通过制度变革来推进环境成本内部化.     

比较优势理论与农业区域专业化发展——以福建省为例

应用比较优势理论探讨农业区域专业化发展问题。理论推导得出,按照区域农产品生产优势来选建农业专业化部门能够实现农业增效,提高农业生产整体水平。以福建省为例,采用区位商和平均值法分析了主要农产品生产比较优势。结果表明,福建省多数县份的一种或几种农产品具有显著比较优势,农业生产的区域专业化已现端倪。但目前大多数县份主导产品不显著,专业化生产与农业资源禀赋不相协调。按照县域农产品的比较优势创建农业专业化部门,将是福建省解决"三农"问题和协调县域之间经济发展的有效途径。     

Pampered Bureaucracy,Political Stability and Trade Integration

This paper examines the effect of trade integration and comparative advantage on one of a country's institutions, which in turn influences its economic efficiency. The environment we explore is one in which a country's lower classes may revolt and appropriate wealth owned by a ruling elite. The elite can avert revolution by incentivizing a potentially productive middle class to sink their human capital into a relatively unproductive bureaucracy. Thus the bureaucracy serves as an institution through which the elite can credibly commit to make transfers to the rest of society, but in the process this reduces economic efficiency. Trade integration alters the relative value of the elite's wealth. This alters the lower classes’ incentive to revolt on the one hand and the elite's incentive to subsidize participation in the inefficient bureaucracy on the other. Therefore, the interaction between a country's comparative advantage and an inefficient economic institution determines whether trade integration increases or reduces economic efficiency. The econometric findings support the model's main prediction.     

A Neo-Heckscher–Ohlin Model of Trade with Endogenous Production Patterns*

We propose a Neo-Heckscher–Ohlin (HO) model of trade that combines comparative endowment advantage, comparative technological advantage, international capital mobility and trade costs. Using an inframarginal approach, we produce a partition of the exogenous parameter space in a host of parameter value subsets that demarcate the various equilibrium patterns of production and trade. The results are startling! They suggest that production within the diversification cone – a key assumption of the Heckscher–Ohlin theory that is required for its core propositions (such as factor price equalisation) to hold – may only prevail on the razor's edge, or under exceptional circumstances. In addition, our findings nominate a mechanism by which improvements in transaction efficiency facilitate international trade thereby stimulating cross-country division of labour. Contrary to other generalisations of the Heckscher–Ohlin (such as the various derivatives of the Kemp–Jones model of trade), our model does not assume a purely Ricardian character: comparative endowment advantage may determine the pattern of trade even in the presence of opposing technological differences, as long as total factor productivity coefficients adjusted for transaction efficiency and factor intensity do not confer unambiguous comparative (technological) advantage. Still, ‘intensity-efficiency’-adjusted comparative technological advantage supersedes factor endowments in determining the flow of trade.     

中国出口产品比较优势动态变化实证分析：1998-2008年

随着专业化程度的加深，中国比较优势长期维持在劳动密集型和低技术含量制成品上，并且优势不断加强。传统的分类分析高估了中国在资本和技术密集型产品上的比较优势，而通过产品的技术分类分析发现，在真正的中、高端技术产品上，中国一直处于比较劣势并且比较劣势不断恶化。今后应努力提高中国的技术水平，加快技术进步、自主创新的步伐，提升制成品的技术含量，积极开发高端技术产品，力求真正在中、高端技术产品上获得比较优势。     

Hidden costs of supply management in a small market

Canada regulates its dairy and poultry industries through supply management. The supply‐management programs use target prices, production quotas and import tariff‐rate quotas to raise domestic prices. Canadian supply‐managed producers cannot export their output to world markets as exports would be considered subsidized under World Trade Organization rules. In this paper, we show that once foregone export opportunities are accounted for, supply management may no longer be beneficial to domestic producers of the supply‐managed commodities. The extent to which foregone profits from exports dominate domestic rents depends on Canada's comparative advantage, domestic market elasticities and the extent of supply management distortion in the domestic market.     

动态比较优势与政策干预

在产品价值链全球化过程中,各国生产技术、要素禀赋结构和产业发展环境等方面的差异造成了各国比较优势产品结构的不同,而比较优势产品处于低端的国家获得较少的贸易利益。为了提高对外贸易利益,以低端产品为比较优势的国家应不断提升比较优势产品附加值水平,转变比较优势结构。比较优势结构的变动内生于技术进步和要素禀赋结构的转变,所以应通过加强边干边学、技术创新和对技术扩散的吸收促进技术进步;通过促进资本积累转变要素禀赋结构,特别应注重教育与职业培训,提高人力资本水平和技术创新能力。同时,政府对当前并不具有比较优势但附加值较高的产业进行政策支持,则能够使动态比较优势结构发生逆转,有效促进比较优势产品向高端过渡。     

China??s growth model and structural unbalance in the open economy

The Chinese economy has been significantly affected by the global financial crisis. Moreover, a rapid decline in growth rate can be mainly attributed to the expenditure structural unbalance, which takes root in its uneven national income distribution. Furthermore, the uneven national income distribution is the result of the extensive pattern of China’s economic growth in the open economy. The extensive pattern is characterized by labor-intensive export-led growth model. The need for high growth rate and fiscal revenue maximization forces local governments to compete against each other to get FDI by undervaluing production factors, resulting in the extensive pattern of growth. From an institutional point of view, uneven social power between government and public, central government and local governments, capital owners and labor force, and so on, can be viewed as the main reason for the extensive pattern of growth and uneven national income distribution. Low wage, which has been the main factor for the comparative advantage, now turns out to be barriers to boosting domestic demand. The technology lag in the manufacturing industry also has a significant negative impact on improving labor productivity and increasing per capita income. Hence, to deal with the recession, not only quantitative easing, but also structural adjustments are needed.     

On Blending Competitive Trade Models

Three standard models typically discussed in the theory of international trade are the Ricardian model, the Heckscher‐Ohlin model and the Specific‐Factors model. Models are often compared with each other, in an attempt to analyze which model is best or fits reality better. Instead, I suggest that these international trade models can often be blended to take account of finite changes when, as a country develops, the appropriate model to be used changes as the pattern of production changes. Trade allows countries to produce fewer commodities than it consumes, and which commodities are selected to be produced may change as the economy grows in the size of its endowment bundle and/or technology changes. At issue is not only the question of which commodities are produced, but also how many commodities are produced, especially with reference to the number of productive factors.     

The Structure and Composition of India’s Exports and Industrial Transformation (1980–2000)

Abstract

This paper analyses structural change in Indian manufactured exports empirically for 143 (mainly manufacturing) industrial groupings. Trade indices such as Balassa’s revealed comparative advantage (RCA) index and variants are used. Detailed econometric analysis is employed to examine structural change. The stability and the process of the intertemporal evolution of the RCA indices is considered. Three technology categories (high technology, medium technology and low technology) are analysed individually. Our results point towards substantial industrial restructuring in manufactured exports. We find evidence of despecialisation within India’s manufactured exports for the time period studied, which is consistent with increasing specialisation in a subset of manufactured exports.     

贸易失衡演进历史的国际比较——基于跨时贸易视角的分析

从跨时贸易的视角来看,贸易顺差、逆差的转换是一国跨时贸易模式变化的结果。当期生产能力强、未来生产能力弱时,一国跨时贸易的模式是出口当期产品,进口未来产品,贸易出现顺差;当期生产能力弱、未来生产能力强时,一国跨时贸易的模式是进口当期产品,出口未来产品,贸易出现逆差。跨时贸易模式主要受跨时比较优势的影响,跨时比较优势的变化与一国的技术优势、经济发展阶段、劳动力成本、国际分工地位以及产业结构的演变密不可分。各国贸易失衡的演进历吏与跨时贸易理论相符。     

城乡统筹、农业现代化与农业的内生增长

在统筹城乡发展背景下,农业现代化是农业发展的必由之路。我国农业发展的制约因素决定了中国特色农业现代化的内在要求,即农业比较利益的提升和农业技术的进步。基于内生增长理论的启示意义,我国农业现代化必须通过推进农业内生增长得以实现,并依靠相应的政策措施得到保障。     

Mineral endowment, labor productivity, and comparative advantage in mining

Labor productivity in the U.S. copper mining industry tripled between 1975 and 1995, allowing the industry to recover its comparative advantage. Mine level data on output and labor input indicate that over three-quarters of this increase came from labor productivity growth at individual mines, and less than a quarter from shifts in output from low- to high-productivity mines. This finding supports the hypothesis that new technology and innovation are as important or more important than mineral endowment in shaping labor productivity trends and comparative advantage in mining.