International Trade and R&D Investment: Evidence from Chinese Manufacturing Firms

A current concern for China's long‐term growth prospect is whether China can become an innovative economy and achieve industrial upgrading to compensate for the gradually declining competitiveness resulting from low‐cost labor. The present study examines this issue by exploring how trade participation impacts on the R&D investment of manufacturing firms through various channels. Merging China's Annual Manufacturing Survey Dataset and the Chinese Customs Dataset allows us to study such a relationship at the individual firm level. The empirical results suggest that channels such as geographical diversification of export markets, share of imports from high‐income countries, average unit value of imports, number of intermediate goods and capital goods imports, and the trade regime are significant factors that influence firm‐level R&D investment. The study discusses the policy implications of the empirical findings in relation to industrial and trade policies that may be potentially beneficial for China's transition towards an innovative economy.     

Trade Openness and Vertical Structure: Evidence From Korean Firm-Level Data

Recent theories and empirics suggest that trade openness increases production fragmentation across countries. In this paper, we focus on the relationship between trade openness and firms’ choice of vertical structure. We find supportive, firm-level evidence that upon trade liberalization, firms restructure their organization by downsizing their domestic production processes (i.e. domestic vertical disintegration) and relocating their input production plants to other countries (i.e. cross-border vertical integration).     

Officials' Foreign Experience and Firms' Exports: Evidence from China

This study examines how the foreign experience of local officials affects firms' exports in China. Using a matched sample from 2000 to 2012, we found that the foreign experience of municipal Party secretaries had a significant impact on the promotion of firms' exports, especially for private firms. This positive impact was more pronounced when officials went abroad at a younger age, stayed abroad for a longer period, returned to China for a longer time, and had greater promotion incentives. We found that officials' foreign experience helped to mitigate the negative impact of institutional distance and provided firms with better access to export subsidies, both of which could promote exporting. There was also a complementary effect when officials and executives both had foreign experience. Overall, our study provides some insights into the economic outcomes of officials' foreign experience and sheds light on the export performance of Chinese firms.     

Trade Destruction and Trade Diversion: Evidence from China

Over the past three decades, we have seen a dramatic increase in the incidence of temporary trade barriers such as antidumping duties and countervailing duties. China has been at the receiving end of a large number of such measures. In this paper, we study how China's exports to its major trade partners have been affected when its major trade partners have used these measures either against China or against other countries. We find that Chinese exports to the country that imposed an antidumping duty decreased by approximately 35 percent. At the same time, an antidumping duty used by the importing country that was directed towards other countries but not against China led to an approximate 30‐percent increase in China's exports to the policy‐imposing country. These results remain robust across various specifications. Our findings have important policy implications. In particular, the magnitude of these effects highlights why it is important to curb the recent widespread use of these barriers.     

私人消费、净产出与国际金融发展——基于“金砖国家”的实证比较分析

本文基于私人消费和净产出关系测度国际资本流动水平,采用混合OLS、Swamy随机系数模型和状态向量空间三种计量方法比较分析"金砖国家"国际资本流动水平和变化过程,进而评估各国国际金融的发展水平和系统稳健性。结果表明:"金砖国家"总体国际金融发展水平较低且各国之间存在较大差异性,其中印度一直保持对资本流动的严格管制,而南非对资本管制一直相对宽松。俄罗斯的资本流动水平最高,但其变化最为剧烈,中国和巴西的资本流动水平和变化程度则处于中间位置。各国应重新审视自身存在的问题,促进国际金融健康发展。     

Bilateral Relations and Exports: Evidence from Google Big Data

This paper investigates the effect of bilateral relations on exports using data from Google Global Data. It finds that bilateral relations significantly reduced the negative effect of cultural distance on exports, indicating that they can promote exports by reducing trade costs. The paper finds that higher average Goldstein scores of events correlated with more exports and that bilateral relations had a larger effect on trust-intensive products, indicating that positive relations built trust and decreased the emotional distance between trading partners. The results also show that bilateral relations promoted exports at both the intensive and extensive margins but with a greater effect on the latter. Finally, bilateral relations had a greater positive effect on developing countries than on developed ones. The results were qualitatively unchanged when endogeneity issues and robustness concerns were considered.     

Economic Value of Country Image: Evidence from International Trade and Implications for China

This paper examines the economic value of country image from the perspective of export prices through matching the CEPII export price data with the British Broadcasting Company country image data from 2006 to 2013. The estimation results show that positive country image has an “elevating” effect and negative country image has a “depressing” effect on export prices. The results also indicate that the lower the level of economic development of an export or import country, the stronger the export price effect of country image. As distances between export countries and trading partners increase, the elevating effect of positive country image on export prices becomes weaker. However, the depressing effect of negative country image does not become weaker over greater distances. We find that export prices are depressed by negative country image to a greater degree for China than for other countries. Therefore, it is necessary for China to prevent the occurrence of incidents detrimental to country image.     

Outsourcing and productivity: Evidence from Korean data

This paper aims to provide the first investigation of the productivity effect of outsourcing by using the Korean industry data at the three-digit ISIC level. We find that there are positive productivity gains from material outsourcing. The impact of material outsourcing increases when we account for the share of imports from China. This is due to the growth of Chinese exports to Korea over the recent years. Moreover, the results also suggest that during our sample period Korea's experiment with service outsourcing did not lead to an increase in its productivity.     

Law and Finance Revisited: Evidence from African Countries

The law and finance theory essentially states that legal origins are a significant determinant of financial development. The conclusion from the law and finance theory is that countries whose legal traditions derived from British Common Law have better developed financial markets than countries following French Civil Law. This study conducted an empirical investigation of the law and finance theory for African countries. Our empirical results showed that legal origins are insignificant in explaining financial development but rather, legal effectiveness significantly explains cross‐country differences in financial development in Africa. We concluded that the law and finance theory does not hold in African countries.     

应对国际贸易摩擦与开放经济条件下的财政建设

在我国开放经济程度全面提高的今天,我们必须在开放经济条件下探讨存在于应对贸易摩擦与建设财政体系之间的联系,一方面,通过开放经济条件下财政政策的运用,要能更有效地应对国际贸易摩擦;另一方面,通过对涉外经贸与财政发展的研究,逐步形成开放经济条件下财政建设的新理念,构建开放经济条件下的财政新体系。本文从应对国际贸易摩擦这一角度探讨了开放经济条件下财政政策的运用问题。从分析中得到这样的政策启示,即要努力构建“四位一体”的开放经济条件下的财政新体系。     

Self-Selection and Post-Entry Effects of Exports: Evidence from Italian Manufacturing Firms

Our paper adds empirical evidence on the causal effects of exporting on firms’ performances. Using a rich database on Italian manufacturing firms, we test the self-selection and the post-entry effects hypotheses with respect to various firms’ characteristics. Our analysis supports the idea that the superior performance of the exporters is due not only to a market selection mechanism, but also to efficiency improvements following the export activity. We find heterogeneous post-entry effects with respect to characteristics as geographical location, size and sector. To test the post-entry hypothesis we implement the propensity score matching and differences-in-differences techniques. JEL no.  D24, F14, O31     

Exports and Productivity Growth: First Evidence from a Continuous Treatment Approach

A recent survey of 54 micro-econometric studies reveals that exporting firms are more productive than non-exporters. However, previous empirical studies show that exporting does not necessarily improve productivity. One possible reason for this result is that most previous studies are restricted to analysing the relationship between a firm’s export status and the growth of its labour productivity, using the firms’ export status as a binary treatment variable and comparing the performance of exporting and non-exporting firms. In this paper, we apply the newly developed generalised propensity score (GPS) methodology that allows for continuous treatment, that is, different levels of the firms’ export activities. Using the GPS method and a large panel data set for German manufacturing firms, we estimate the relationship between a firm’s export-sales ratio and its labour productivity growth rate. We find that there is a causal effect of firms’ export activities on labour productivity growth. However, exporting improves labour productivity growth only within a sub-interval of the range of firms’ export-sales ratios. JEL no.  F14, F23, L60     

Exports, FDI, and Productivity: Dynamic Evidence from Japanese Firms

This paper examines the relationship between exports, foreign direct investment, and firm productivity. Using longitudinal panel data on Japanese firms, it is found that the most productive firms engage in exports and foreign direct investment, medium productive firms engage in either exports or foreign direct investment, and the least productive firms focus only on the domestic market. Moreover, exports and foreign direct investment appear to improve firm productivity once the productivity convergence effect is controlled for. Firms that retain a presence in foreign markets, either by exports or foreign direct investment, show the highest productivity growth, which contributes to improvements in national productivity. JEL no. F10, F20, D21     

直面新的贸易壁垒——国外对华反倾销成因与对策

20世纪70年代以来，随着国际贸易自由化的加强，降低关税水平和减少非关税措施已在全球范围内展开，目前发达国家工业制成品的平均关税已降低到3％左右。历史上传统的贸易壁垒已失去了原有的作用。但出于对本国利益的考虑，世界各国对本国产业的保护从来没有停止过，保护的手段也不断变化。在可选择的“符合国际惯例”的保护手段中，反倾销就成了最常用最有效的一种手段。在反倾销这种堂而皇之的武器的庇护下，相当多的国家滥用反倾销条款，以反倾销名义实行贸易保护主义。     

韩国债券市场:结构、工具与基础设施

韩国债券市场是亚洲较大的国内债券市场,其近年的迅速发展越来越受到世界各国特别是东亚新兴市场国家的高度重视。本文主要对其市场结构、交易工具、制度法律框架以及税收待遇和结算交割系统等进行了扼要介绍。