Do High‐Skill Immigrants trigger High‐Quality Trade?

This paper investigates the links between product quality and the pro‐trade effect of ethnic networks using a large panel on bilateral stocks of immigrants with information for 19 OECD destination countries and 177 origin countries. In line with the approach of Rauch and Trindade, we classify traded goods according to their quality level and separately estimate pro‐trade elasticity of ethnic networks for each subgroup. We allow for heterogeneity of immigrants according to both the level of per capita income of their country of origin and their education level. Our findings suggest that the trend of the pro‐trade effect of immigrants over quality seems to be driven by the North–South specialisation across varieties for both supply and demand. Indeed, ethnic networks mostly facilitate imports of those varieties for which their countries of origin have a comparative advantage; as for exports, ethnic networks are more effective in promoting exports to their homeland of those varieties for which there is relatively higher demand. We show that the same trend applies to products characterised by the same degree of differentiation according to the classification proposed by Rauch and – given their lower liquidity constraints and advantages in human capital – we find a greater impact of high‐skilled migrants consistent across all quality levels.     

我国高新技术产业贸易竞争力分析

近年来,我国高新技术产品出口在制成品出口中的比重不断增加,由此引发对我国高新技术产业贸易竞争力及比较优势的思考。本文通过对比传统贸易理论和内生比较优势理论,利用贸易竞争力指数和“显示”比较优势指数对我国高新技术产业的国际竞争力进行了测算,并运用战略性贸易政策对我国发展高新技术产业提供了政策支持。     

Do Environmental Regulations Influence Trade Patterns? Testing Old and New Trade Theories

The relationship between trade liberalisation and the environment has been the subject of a growing body of literature in recent years. One particular focus of attention has been whether environmental regulations are influencing patterns of international trade. This paper aims to examine this issue in the context of the Heckscher‐Ohlin‐Vanek (HOV) model of trade, but also in a ‘new’ trade model characterised by monopolistic competition and differentiated products. Our use of the HOV model improves upon a well cited study by Tobey (1990) in many ways, not least by allowing for the possible endogeneity of environmental regulations. We find no significant relationship between such regulations and ‘dirty’ net exports. The ‘new’ trade model explains the presence of both intra‐ and inter‐industry trade and we again allow for the possible endogeneity of regulations. We believe this to be the first study to assess the role of environmental regulations within a ‘new’ trade model, but also the first to allow for the endogeneity of regulations in a cross‐country model of trade. We find environmental regulations to be a statistically significant determinant of the share of inter‐industry trade (net trade) and we find this significance to increase when endogeneity is controlled for.     

“金砖四国”服务贸易比较优势及其决定因素

选取"金砖四国"1994-2009年相关数据,本文采取只考虑出口因素的RCA指数和同时考虑进出口因素的RTA指数,对比分析了金砖四国服务贸易比较优势状况,从总体比较优势及分部门比较优势两个层面,对服务贸易比较优势的影响因素进行了实证分析,结果表明:只有印度的服务贸易总体具有比较优势,其他三个国家都不具有比较优势;"金砖四国"的服务贸易分部门比较优势状况差异较大;人力资本积累对服务贸易比较优势产生显著的正向效应,人均GDP并未提高服务贸易国际竞争力,服务业增加值对服务贸易比较优势有正向效应;此外,货物出口和吸收FDI对服务贸易比较优势的影响效应在不同部门之间差异较大。     

Determinants of Export Diversification Around the World: 1962–2000

Using a large dataset for 79 countries covering the period 1962–2000, this study analyses the main determinants of export diversification (concentration). We explore the role of several factors and we use three different indicators of export concentration. We find robust evidence across specifications and indicators that trade openness induces higher specialisation. In contrast, financial development does not seem to help countries to diversify their exports. Looking at the effects of exchange rates, in some of the results, a negative effect of real exchange rate volatility on export diversification is detected, but no significant effects of exchange rate overvaluation. There is also evidence that human capital accumulation contributes positively to diversify exports and that increasing remoteness tends to reduce export diversification. We also explore the role of terms of trade shocks. Most of the results suggest an interesting interaction between this variable and human capital: improvements in the terms of trade tend to concentrate exports, but this effect is lower for those countries with higher levels of human capital. This evidence suggests that countries with higher education can take advantage of positive terms of trade shocks to increase export diversification.     

技术贸易壁垒下中美纺织品贸易竞争力及影响因素研究

采用国际市场占有率、显性比较优势指数及贸易互补性指数分析了中美两国纺织品在国际市场中的竞争地位及各纺织品类贸易互补性强度,并将美国发布的纺织行业技术通报(TBT)作为技术变量纳入随机前沿引力模型,进一步实证分析中美纺织品贸易的影响因素。结果表明:中国纺织品国际竞争优势强于美国,尤其表现在纺织制成品类;出口角度看,两国在纺织制成品类上呈现显著贸易互补性,进口角度看,两国在纺织原料上具有较强互补性。在影响因素中,技术壁垒、进口国经济、出口国人口及两国距离负向抑制中美纺织品贸易,出口国经济、进口国人口及人均收入之差正向促进中美纺织贸易发展。     

中性还是偏向性技术变迁影响出口?——基于细分行业贸易数据的经验分析

运用Tobit模型对中国SITC-3位码行业出口数据进行实证分析,本文发现,生产率越高的行业出口能力越强,技术变迁带来的效率改进是出口增长的重要原因。但与中性技术变迁相比,偏向性技术变迁更适合解释中国不同行业的相对出口存在差异的问题。劳动和资本密集型行业发生的偏向资本技术变迁,是中国劳动密集型产品出口比重不断减小,而资本密集型产品出口比重不断增加的重要原因。偏向资本的技术变迁,以及由此引起的要素相对生产率改变,与要素相对禀赋一起,预示着我国动态比较优势的逐渐形成。     

What Would Normalisation of Economic Relations Between Mashrek Countries,Turkey and Israel Imply?

This article examines the potential for economic cooperation among Mashrek countries, Turkey and Israel in the fields of trade in goods and services both separately and across‐field. It first describes the macroeconomic features of the region and then estimates the overall potential for inter‐industry trade in goods by estimating gravity equations for each country separately and the potential for intra‐industry trade using Grubel‐Lloyd indices. The article also examines the potential for trade in specific services, namely information and computer technology, transport, financial and health services.     

SA8000对我国劳动密集型产品出口的影响

随着欧美国家社会责任运动的风行而诞生的SA8000,在其产生的近十年间对发展中国家的国际贸易产生了深远的影响。由于劳动力成本是我国重要的比较优势,劳动密集型产品的出口占有相当比重,而受SA8000约束的主要是劳动密集型产品,因此,该标准将逐步对我国外贸产生越来越大的影响。     

A contribution to a multidimensional analysis of trade competition

International trade grew substantially throughout the last decades and international relations became more important for the economic performance of the countries. Simultaneously, new poles emerged in the international arena leading to growing competition for higher market shares. Therefore, trade competition is a critical dimension of analysis for applied international trade studies. We propose a conceptual framework for measuring this phenomenon by combining some critical previous contributions to build a multidimensional and more comprehensive concept, which defines trade competition as a function of the degree of both structural similarity and total exports overlap. Moreover, structural similarity should take into account three elements: sectoral shares similarity, inter‐sectoral similarity (evaluating how different the distinct sectors are) and intra‐sectoral similarity (proximity in terms of quality ranges exported). Several measures are proposed to empirically capture the concept suggested. Finally, we present an example including the exports of six European economies (Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Greece, Hungary and Sweden) to 124 destination markets (in 2007, 2011, 2015) in order to illustrate the application of the concept and measures suggested.     

The relationship between trade openness and economic growth: Some new insights on the openness measurement issue

Empirical results on the links between trade openness and economic growth often suggest that, in the long run, more outward‐oriented countries register better economic growth. However, a similar level of trade openness can hide different types of trade structures. The aim of this paper was to enrich the way of measuring trade openness taking into account two different dimensions of countries’ integration in world trade: export quality and export variety. Based on the estimation of an endogenous growth model on a panel of 169 countries between 1988 and 2014 using a generalised method of moments estimator, our results confirm that countries exporting higher quality products and new varieties grow more rapidly. More importantly, we find a non‐linear pattern between the export ratio and the quality of the export basket, suggesting that openness to trade may impact growth negatively for countries which are specialised in low‐quality products. A non‐linear relationship between export variety, the export ratio and growth is also found, suggesting that countries increasing their exports will grow more rapidly after reaching a certain degree of the extensive margin of exports.     

Thick and Thin Borders in the European Union: How Deep Internal Integration is Within Countries,and How Shallow Between Them

The existence of large border effects is one of the main puzzles of international macroeconomics. The seminal paper by McCallum found that trade between any two Canadian provinces was (on average) 22 times greater than trade between any Canadian province and any US state. Although various authors have estimated internal and external border effects for the whole European Union and some specific European countries, none has done so in the manner that McCallum's seminal paper, stymied by lack of data on region‐to‐region international trade flows. This study uses a novel data set that captures intra and international truck shipments between Spanish regions and regions in seven European countries during the period 2004–11. It computes internal and external border effects, offering novel results for aggregate flows and the importing countries, and estimates several specifications of the gravity equation, so as to tackle such issues as the multilateral resistance term, heteroscedasticity, and zero flows and non‐linear relation between trade and distance. The paper also adds a detailed analysis on the external border effect for each Spanish exporting region and each of the seven European countries considered. By means of this analysis, we shed new light on the relative integration between regions of these seven countries and Spanish exporting regions. Finally, we conduct an extrapolation exercise, computing the ‘trade potentials’ that would be expected in a fully integrated Europe and estimating how long full integration would take to achieve between each Spanish exporting region and each European importing country. To this regard, two alternative scenarios are considered: one using the growth rates of the Spanish exports before the crisis (2001–08) and other considering the post‐crisis growth rates (2011–13).     

Vertical Intra‐industry Trade and Fragmentation: An Empirical Examination of the US Auto‐parts Industry

The global auto industry has undergone a significant structural transformation in the last two decades as a result of the international fragmentation of production. This increase in cross‐border production‐sharing activities in the auto industry led to intra‐industry trade (IIT) in auto‐parts. In this study, the extent of IIT in the US auto‐parts industry is examined by decomposing trade into inter‐industry trade, vertical IIT and horizontal IIT. Then the development of vertical IIT is analysed as an indicator of international fragmentation between the US and 29 trading partners. Several country‐specific hypotheses suggested by the fragmentation literature are tested for the period 1989–2006. The results indicate that a substantial portion of IIT in the US auto‐parts industry is vertical IIT, and the econometric results generally support the hypotheses drawn from the theory. In particular, the findings show that the extent of the US vertical IIT is positively correlated with average market size, differences in market size, differences in factor endowments and outward foreign direct investment, while it is negatively correlated with distance and differences in per capita GDP.     

中印纺织品服装出口竞争优势的实证研究

中国和印度劳动力资源都比较丰富,在劳动密集型产品出口方面有一定的比较优势。在纺织品服装贸易领域,印度一直对中国影响比较大。随着中国生产要素成本的不断提高、人民币升值的步伐加快,中国纺织产业国际竞争压力日益凸现。因此,借鉴印度纺织产业的成功模式,提升中国纺织产业竞争力正成为人们关注的热点。     

Australian Exports of Dairy Products

Abstract

Exports of dairy products are becoming increasingly important in terms of export earnings for Australia. The industry is the fourth highest foreign exchange earner compared to all Australia's food exports. However, Australian exports of dairy products account for about 67 per cent of the total Australian production of dairy products, and about 13 per cent of total world exports of dairy products. About 68 per cent of Australian dairy products exports are sold on Asian markets. The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenging issues and opportunities for Australian exports of dairy products on world markets and to identify potential and emerging export markets for Australian dairy products. Australia is highly restricted on its access to world dairy product markets by the impact of export subsidies and other trade barriers of overseas markets. The current economic and political crises in Asia are also not favourable to maintain export sales on some of the Asian markets. The export support scheme in Australia has made exporting attractive relative to domestic sales. But it is anticipated that the termination of the scheme after June 2000, will reduce production and exports by 6 and 20 per cent, respectively in the short run. However, in the long run, resources will be efficiently used without government intervention and Australian dairy products will also be competitive on the domestic market. There is scope for greater market opportunities in the emerging markets in Asia and other parts of the world for Australian dairy products. Australia will also benefit from the agreement on international trade that directs exporting countries to reduce export subsidy and remove nontariff trade barriers on exports of dairy products. Australia should implement appropriate measures to inaease the milk yield per cow, to improve the quality of dairy products and to identify the need for market promotion and research in order to increase the volume of dairy product exports on world markets, especially in Asia and other potential markets such as Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Americas.     

Reputation and export performance: Danish butter exports and the British market,c.1880–c.1914

This article extends current scholarship on the role of branding and trade marking in establishing competitive advantage. Using a case study of Danish butter exports to the British market, 1880–1914, we demonstrate that many of the technological and organisational innovations in this industry were not in themselves sufficient to guarantee that Danish butter would command price premiums in the British market. We argue that the introduction of the ‘Lurbrand’, together with the rigorous prosecution of vendors misrepresenting other butters as Danish, were vital to maintaining the reputation of Danish butter at a time when rival countries were producing butter of comparable quality. Of particular importance to current debates on branding and trade marking is our finding that independent butter producers collaborated with the Danish government to use the same trade mark and to ensure that state inspection guaranteed that Danish butter was produced consistently to the highest quality.     

我国垂直型产业内贸易的特征分析

本文认为我国在产业内贸易方面,出口产品以低质量为特征,进口产品则以高质量为特征,属于垂直型产业内贸易活动。对我国2001年至2003年产业内贸易的跨部门计量分析显示,我国产业内贸易对劳动要素的弹性略大于对资本要素的弹性,我国产业内贸易充分利用了我国劳动要素的比较优势,并成为了其一个重要特征。     

The role of endowments,technology and size in international trade: new evidence from product-level data

Using product-level trade data, we empirically investigate the export patterns of more than 150 countries in their exports to the USA, Brazil, India, and Japan. We document strong evidence that exporters specialize according to their relative factor endowments, technology, and economic size. More developed, capital abundant countries are found to export products of higher unit values and a wider range of products to developed, emerging and developing markets. More developed, economically larger, and technologically advanced countries are also the major exporters of new products, spanning a wide range of product categories with high unit values. Our findings provide important insights into the macro phenomenon that a large proportion of the global trade takes place among developed economies, and that the latter are also major exporters to developing markets.