The Canada U.S. free trade agreement: Competitive tradeoffs between foreign direct investment and trade

This paper assesses the impact of the Canada U.S. Free Trade Agreement on exports and foreign direct investment of processed foods. Results indicate that U.S. exports to Canada more than doubled, while Canadian exports to the U.S. nearly doubled after the implementation of the Canada U.S. Free Trade Agreement in 1989. Regression results of the covariance model on panel data show that U.S. and Canadian food processing firms appear to use both exports and foreign direct investments as complementary market access strategies. This research was supported by a grant from the Canadian Embassy. In addition, the authors thank Carolyn Dimitri of the University of Maryland for helpful comments.     

Identifying foreign suppliers in U.S. import data

Relationships between firms and their foreign suppliers are the foundation of international trade, but data limitations and reliability concerns make studying such relationships challenging. We evaluate and enhance supplier information in U.S. import data and present new facts about importer–exporter relationships. Count of foreign exporters from U.S. import data tends to exceed those from source country data, especially from China. The pattern of U.S. imports from origin countries changes substantially by tracing trade back to the supplier's location instead. Related‐party relationships trade more, while larger countries have more relationships.     

Price-cost margins and manufacturing industry structure: The case of a small economy with bilateral trade in manufactured goods

The majority of empirical tests of the structure-performance model have examined the relationship between performance and domestic industry structure, although in recent work aspects of foreign competition have been included. In the context of a Republic of Ireland study, this paper attempts to extend the model by redefining the demand growth and import share variables and by including a measure of the relative competitiveness of foreign suppliers vis-á-vis domestic firms.The empirical results lend support to the proposed extension and suggest that in a small economy foreign competition has a more important impact on industry performance than competition among domestic firms.     

Technical change in U.S. industries

We use the normalized quadratic cost function, introduced by Diewert and Wales (1987), to measure and analyze the rate and biases of technical change at the sectoral level in eleven major U.S. industries — manufacturing, construction, mining, agriculture, finance, health, wholesale, transportation, education, hospitality, and utilities — using annual KLEM (capital, labor, energy, and intermediate materials) data from the World KLEMS database, over the period from 1947 to 2010. We extend the work in Feng and Serletis (2008), by taking a new approach to econometric modeling, merging the econometric approach to productivity measurement with recent state-of-the-art advances in financial econometrics. In particular, we relax the homoskedasticity assumption and instead assume that the covariance matrix of the errors of the flexible interrelated factor demand systems is time-varying. We also pay explicit attention to theoretical regularity, treating the curvature property as a maintained hypothesis, thus achieving superior modeling in the context of a parametric nonlinear factor demand system that captures certain important features of the data.     

Exchange-rate variability and U.S.-French trade flows: evidence from industry data

Recent studies have greatly expanded the literature on the effects of exchange-rate volatility on industry-level bilateral trade flows. In this study, we examine the case of the United States and France, applying cointegration analysis to a set of 146 U.S. export and 115 U.S. import industries. We find that the majority of industries show little or no relationship between risk and trade volumes, but that small industries—particularly for exports—show more sensitivity than do large ones. A disproportionate share of industries respond positively to increased volatility, particularly among U.S. importers, suggesting the presence of “risk loving” behavior.     

U.S. trade remedy law and agriculture: trade diversion and investigation effects

Abstract .  We study U.S. agricultural antidumping and countervailing duty cases from 1980 to 2005, and gauge the effectiveness of trade remedy law as a form of protection. The purpose is to measure the resulting investigation and trade diversion effects. Previous research on trade in manufactured products has shown that the domestic protection offered by AD and CV duties is largely offset by trade diversion. In contrast, we find that for agriculture, trade diversion is relatively unimportant. So AD and CVD cases are very effective forms of protection for U.S. agriculture.     

Information technology and economic performance in U.S industries

Abstract .  We study the relationship between information technology (IT) and economic performance, to explore whether IT-capital promotes productivity growth. We use a data set similar to that of previous researchers, but employ non-parametric estimation techniques in order to directly estimate the output elasticities of IT for each industry and time period. We find that IT has a positive effect on productivity, which varies among industries and time. Moreover, adjustment costs are important when identifying this effect. Finally, IT-capital growth appears to be raising income in all industries used in our sample, even those that experienced output reduction.     

Industrial policy and U.S.-Japanese trade

We find that while the depreciation subsidy and special treatment from the MITI has significantly promoted the Japanese trade advantage, legalized cartelization status in Japan has not had any apparent effect on bilateral trade with the U.S.     

A time-series analysis of the U.S. kidney transplantation and the waiting list: donor substitution effects

This article provides an econometric analysis of the relationship between live and deceased (cadaveric) kidney donations in the United States for the period 1992:IV–2006:II. Utilizing a cointegration representation and impulse-response analysis, we find strong evidence for deceased donor kidneys “crowding out” living donations, potentially undermining conventional efforts to reduce the shortage.     

中美贸易摩擦根源的反思

1980年7月2日,美国对中国薄荷醇进行首次反倾销调查。2001年中国入世以来,中美贸易一反入世正面效应的常态,贸易摩擦硝烟不断。截至2004年年底,美国已累计对华发起110起反倾销调查,19起保障措施(包括5起特定产品保障措施和12起纺织品特保措施调查),占中国涉案总数的20%,成为迄今为止对华贸易摩擦案件最多的国家。2004年,美国对华新发起6起反倾销调查,涉案金额34.109亿美元,针对中国纺织品发起12起特保措施调查。进入2005年,中美纺织品贸易争端再次引起众人关注。其实,作为全球两大重要的贸易体,在贸易中发生摩擦本是司空见惯的现象,然而,由…     

Asymmetric J-curve: evidence from industry trade between U.S. and U.K.

ABSTRACT

Previous research that assessed the impact of exchange rate changes on the trade balance between the U.S. and U.K. assumed the effects are symmetric. In this paper, we add to the literature on the asymmetric J-curve phenomenon by considering the trade balance of 68 two-digit industries that trade between the two countries. We find short-run asymmetric effects of the real dollar-pound rate in almost all industries. However, short-run asymmetric effects were translated into significant long-run asymmetric effects in 25 industries. Indeed, the asymmetric J-curve hypothesis was supported in 18 industries.     

U.S. bilateral trade balances and the dollar

U.S. bilateral export and import values with seven large trading partners are tested for real exchange rate effects over 1975–1985. The results suggest that dollar devaluation would have the most favorable impact on the U.S. trade balance in the case of Japan and the least favorable in the case of Canada.     

Economic growth and urbanization: A cross-section and time-series analysis of thirty-five developing countries

In this paper, we discuss the influence of urbanization and urban primacy on the economic growth rates of developing nations. Included in the paper is preliminary evidence, from cross-section and time-series analyses, that while urbanization is an inevitable product of economic development, the process of urbanization is best achieved when the urbanization is managed and gradual. Time-series and cross-section analyses indicate a negative relationship between urbanization and urban primacy and economic growth. However, further cross-section analysis shows that all industrialized economies are highly-urbanized. The dichotomy is explained in that urbanization is inevitable with economic growth, but the pace and character of urbanization also matters. We present a basic model that predicts the economic growth rates of developing nations. The tests performed could only follow the general tone of the model because of the limitations of the data sources. (JEL: O10, O18, O40)     

Financial cycle and business cycle: An empirical analysis based on the data from the U.S

In this paper, we first study the relationship between the financial cycle and the business cycle in the time and frequency domain. Then we also explore the interactions and dynamic mechanisms of the financial cycle, the business cycle, real interest rate and exchange rate by the VAR model. The empirical results show that the financial cycle is closely related to the business cycle, especially at medium-term frequencies (8–30 years), the business cycle leads the financial cycle with a high positive correlation. However, the relationship between them is not significant during the Great Moderation at business-cycle (2–4 years). In addition, the financial cycle not only becomes a main driver of real interest rate, the financial cycle and the business cycle, but also serves as an important source of the business cycle fluctuations. In general, our results lay some theoretical foundation for the policy practice of financial and economic stability.     

The Costs of U.S. Hegemony: Military power,military spending,and U.S. trade performance

For David Gordon and his collaborators in the social structures of accumulation (SSA) tradition, the willingness to threaten potential adversaries with military forces capable of acting on a global scale was seen to positively affect the U.S. terms of trade. U.S. hegemony yielded specific supply side benefits as favorable terms of trade reduced relative input prices and boosted profitability. Although Gordon and his co-authors recognize the potential costs of sustaining a large, globally active military apparatus, these costs are not incorporated in the econometric models supporting the SSA theory. This paper attempts to extend the SSA analysis by empirically measuring the effects of both military spending and military power on U.S. trade performance over the 1951–1987 period. It is shown that while military power and spending commitments may have positive effects on the terms of trade, these military variables had direct and indirect negative impacts on the U.S. net export balance and therefore domestic aggregate demand. In the context of a model of U.S. growth performance open to international transactions, the overall effect of the postwar military system on U.S. economic growth was likely negative in the cold-war era     

Barriers to entry in the U.S. and Japanese titanium industries

The purpose of this paper is to construct and empirically test a model designed to determine the impact of increases in production capacity and any related excess capacity on the probability of entry into the Japanese titanium industry. These results will be compared to those of an earlier study pertaining to the U.S. titanium industry. Relevant predictor variables are employed in a model to obtain estimates of changes in titanium production and capacity. These estimates are then used in a logit analysis to determine their impact on the probability of firm entry into the Japanese titanium industry. The results of this analysis, unlike those from the earlier U.S. study, indicate that predicted capacity expansion by incumbent Japanese firms had no significant impact on the probability of entry.     

Adjustment in the process of trade liberalization: The U.S. and Mexico

Although many of the issues in North-American trade liberalization are reminiscent of those faced earlier by Europeans and by the United States and Canada, there are also some non-trivial differences. Divergences in economic structure are more pronounced. They affect the interplay of various sources of welfare gains and costs and are likely to make inter-industry and vertically integrated intra-industry trade more important Non-tariff barriers play a greater role in the present context and the welfare effects of preferntial elimination of quantitative restraints differ in important respect from those of tariffs. A free trade area, for example, which is clearly trade-diverting under tariff liberalization may be trade-creating under quantitative restrictions.     

Financial factors and the margins of trade: Evidence from cross-country firm-level data

Using a large cross-country, firm-level database containing 5000 firms in 9 developing and emerging economies, we study how financial factors affect both firms' export decisions and the amount exported by firms. First, our results highlight the importance of the impact of firms' access to finance on their entry decision into the export market. However, better financial health neither increases the probability of remaining an exporter once the firm has entered, nor the size of exports. Second, we find that financial constraints create a disconnection between firms' productivity and their export status: productivity is only a significant determinant of the export decision if the firm has a sufficient access to external finance. Finally, an increase in a country's financial development dampens this disconnection, thus acting both on the number of exporters and on the exporters' selection process. These results contribute to the literature documenting the role of fixed costs and of the extensive margin of trade in total trade adjustment, and provide micro-level evidence of the positive impact of financial development on trade found by previous literature.