Positive feedback mechanisms in Adam Smith's theories of international trade

Smith understood and focused attention on dynamic growth explanations of trade patterns, and the gains from trade often ignored by subsequent theorists. This paper highlights the positive feedback mechanisms central to such an assessment of trade. The analysis invites a question that would appear out of place in a static gains from trade analysis: are rich countries afforded greater opportunities to gain from trade than poor countries? It is found that Smith's answer is yes. The gains from trade are systematically skewed toward rich countries in two ways. First, specialization according to a comparative advantage in a good characterized by limited increasing returns can result in a persistent state of slow growth or complete stagnation. Second, the gains available to the poor country from the transfer of technology are limited by the extent of the division of labor. Many technologies produced in rich countries cannot be utilized by poor countries without the technological expertise (which the division of labor creates) necessary to incorporate the technology into the productive structure of the poor country. Both of these results suggest that trade can help to perpetuate and even widen existing technology and productivity gaps between rich and poor countries.     

Trade and Wages: a Deeper Investigation

A new presentation of the specific factors model shows how labor fares under international trade by considering how the price elasticity of the nominal wage rate responds to the terms of trade as well as factor endowments. The key empirical implication is that under a standard assumption about tastes it is straightforward to decompose the gains to labor into measurable terms of trade effects and production bias effects. This provides the basis for suggested time series studies contrasting the specific factors model with the Heckscher–Ohlin model. We then perform a new theoretical analysis of the specific factors model to compare how labor fares under autarky and free trade.     

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。     

A NEW THEORY OF DEMAND AND SUPPLY AND EMERGENCE OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE FROM DOMESTIC TRADE

Abstract. In the paper a fixed learning cost is introduced into a framework with consumer-producers and transaction costs. The fixed learning cost yields a rate of return on the investment in individual specific learning and training which is increasing in its rate of utilization. Division of labor can avoid duplicated learning costs and generate economies of specialized learning. The tradeoff between economies of specialization and transaction costs can be used to explain concurrent increases in the extent of the market, aggregate demand, productivity, trade dependence, the degree of market integration, the degree of production concentration, diversity of economic structure, variety of different professions, each person's level of specialization, and the extent of endogenous comparative advantage and the emergence of international trade from domestic trade. This model explains demand and supply as two sides of the level of division of labor which is determined by a transaction cost coefficient. Hence, the demand law may not hold even for normal goods owing to complicated interdependencies between the level of specialization and demand and between the level of specialization and prices of traded goods. The extended version of this model with the CES function is used to endogenize variety of consumption in addition to the endogenization of individuals'level of specialization.     

贸易增速下降之"谜"——基于全球价值链分工视角的解释

当前,全球贸易增速出现了大幅下降,这难以简单地从危机冲击及其后续影响层面进行解读.实际上,贸易的基础是分工,看待当前全球贸易失速现象理应深入到国际分工层面.鉴于此,文章构建理论模型以刻画上述现象及其成因,研究发现:(1)全球价值链分工演进的阶段性变化对贸易增速具有深刻影响,当分工深化到一定程度后,贸易规模扩大的"基数效应"和分工深化的"边际效应"会导致贸易增速下降;(2)对单个国家来说,价值链攀升也会影响贸易增速.进一步地,利用跨国面板数据的计量分析表明:(1)在有效控制其他影响因素的条件下,全球价值链分工深化的程度对贸易增速呈倒"U"形的非线性影响;(2)价值链攀升对单个经济体的贸易增速具有显著的负面影响.由此可知,在当前全球经济处于深度调整的特殊时期,价值链分工深化趋势减缓乃至"停滞",是导致当前全球贸易失速的根本原因之一;而中国的外贸失速除了受到上述因素影响外,还与自身的价值链升级有关.因此,面临全球贸易增速下降的压力,中国外贸发展亟待转型升级,充分发挥"稳定"全球贸易增长的应有作用.     

Would a North-South Free Trade Agreement Hurt Unskilled Labor in the North?

I present a simple model to examine the impact of international outsourcing on the welfare of skilled and unskilled labor. In this model, specialized business services are to facilitate manufacturing production, creating additional welfare gains in the presence of positive production externalities. Policies that favor the business service sector contribute to the development of a larger bundle of specialized business services, generating more welfare gains to not only skilled but also unskilled labor. Thus, a country’s unskilled labor is not necessarily worse off with open trade if the country is prosperous in business service provisions.     

Division of Labor and Endogenous Comparative Advantage: A Smith–Ricardian Model of International Trade

This paper develops a Smith–Ricardian model that incorporates division of labor into the continuum‐good Ricardian model of Dornbusch et al. (1977 ). The tradeoff between the efficiency gain and coordination cost in production determines the efficient level of division of labor. Consequently, the traditional comparative advantage becomes endogenous. The model is able to explain how the recent progress in information technology (IT) would affect the efficient level of division of labor and competitive margin. In particular, we show that absolute advantage in division of labor and relative labor supply play a crucial role in determining the different effects of universal IT progress on a country's competitive margin in international trade.     

An Inframarginal Analysis of the Ricardian Model

This paper shows that a 2 × 2 Ricardian model has a unique general equilibrium, and the comparative statics of the equilibrium involve discontinuous jumps. If partial division of labor occurs in equilibrium, the country producing both goods would impose a tariff, whereas the country producing a single good would prefer unilateral free trade. If complete division of labor occurs in equilibrium, both countries would negotiate to achieve free trade. In a model with three countries, the country which does not have a comparative advantage relative to the other two countries, and/or which has low transaction efficiency, may be excluded from trade.     

International trade and capital accumulation in an overlapping generations model with a public intermediate good

We investigate the effects of a public intermediate good on trade patterns, capital accumulation, and the gains from trade in a two‐country, three‐sector overlapping generations model. A public intermediate good affects not only the productivity of private production but capital accumulation; thus, the results differ from those obtained in previous studies. First, opening to trade may accelerate capital accumulation in the higher‐savings country. Additionally, the country producing a public intermediate good more (which is labor‐intensive) may be the importer of the investment good (which is the most capital‐intensive). Finally, the lower‐savings country may have lower steady‐state welfare under trade.     

跨境垂直专业化影响因素分析

随着产业组织片段化分解及全球布局的进一步深化,垂直专业化分工成为国际分工的重要形式。东盟作为中国第三大贸易伙伴,也是中国产能输出及构建自己主导的区域生产网络的重点区域。在综合利用跨境投入产出与国际贸易数据对中国-东盟制造业垂直专业化分工进行分行业测度的基础上,运用分行业面板数据分析了中国-东盟制造业垂直专业化分工影响因素,发现行业市场结构或市场集中度是最重要的影响因素,研发投入与技术投入密集度、产业开放度也是中国-东盟制造业垂直专业化分工的重要影响因素。     

比较优势演化、全球价值链分工与中国产业升级

随着全球分工体系的深化与国际贸易形式的演进,国际生产与贸易的格局正经历着深刻的调整,全球价值链成为了当今国际分工的主要发生形式,对各国的价值创造体系持续进行着重构与深化,产业结构也随之发生巨大的变化。自改革开放以来,中国通过参与全球价值链分工使得中国经济迅速发展,但产业结构仍停留在价值链的分工中低端,而要实现经济可持续发展,就必须首先实现产业结构的升级。本文从比较优势的演化入手,讨论了比较优势如何演化以及全球价值链分工与中国产业升级三者的联动关系,分析了中国产业的三大基本特征,认为中国产业升级必须走比较优势非线性演化与线性演化并重之路,促进生产要素的高级化、推进产业模块化、实施产业集群,枸建区域联动的国内价值链体系。     

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.     

Imperfect Competition and the Gains from Trade in a Macro Duopoly Model

A general-equilibrium duopoly trade model is developed. In the micro model, constant-elasticity market demand curves produce backward-bending reaction functions. This is combined with a macro analysis in which the real wage is determined competitively, while nominal variables depend on the money supply. Trade can lead to large increases in aggregate output, employment, and real wages. The gains from trade are the result of increases in market size, and greater competition in each market. The benefits of trade are largest when marginal-cost curves slope downward and the labor supply curve is elastic.     

Skills,Tasks and the Scarcity of Talent in a Global Economy

The scarcity of talent is a tremendous challenge for firms in the globalized world. This paper investigates the role of labor market imperfection in open economies for the usage of talent in the production process of firms. For this purpose, I set up a heterogeneous firms model, where production consists of a continuum of tasks that differ in complexity. Firms hire low‐skilled and high‐skilled workers to perform these tasks. How firms assign workers to tasks depends on factor prices for the two skill types and the productivity advantage of high‐skilled workers in the performance of complex tasks. I study the firms’ assignment problem under two labor market regimes, which capture the polar cases of fully flexible wages and a binding minimum wage for low‐skilled workers. Since the minimum wage lowers the skill premium, it increases the range of tasks performed by high‐skilled workers, which enhances the stock of knowledge within firms to solve complex tasks and reduces the mass of active firms. In a setting with fully flexible wages trade does not affect the firm‐internal assignment of workers to tasks. On the contrary, if low‐skilled wages are fixed by a minimum wage, trade renders high‐skilled workers a scarce resource and reduces the range of tasks performed by this skill type with negative consequences for the human capital stock within firms. In this case, trade leads to higher per‐capita income for both skill types and thus to higher welfare in the open than in the closed economy, whereas – somewhat counter‐intuitive – inequality between the two skill types decreases, as more low‐skilled workers find employment in the production process.     

International Productivity Differences,Trade and the Distributions of Factor Endowments

This paper presents a model of task assignment and worker matching to explore how the distributions of labor endowments within countries influence aggregate productivity and international trade patterns. Higher moments of the skill distribution have complex relationships with the organization of the labor force. First, labor endowments skewed toward high abilities exhibit positive assortment of workers across tasks, while countries with distributions of ability skewed towards low abilities exhibit underemployment. Second, greater dispersion improves aggregate productivity in countries that experience underemployment, but worsens productivity where there is assortative assignment. Furthermore, the shape and size of factor endowments are shown to jointly determine a global pattern of comparative advantage. Countries are more likely to export their abundant factors when labor markets organize heterogenous workers effectively. These predictions receive empirical support from Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) countries using measures of diversity constructed from educational attainment.     

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.     

Intraindustry trade in intermediate goods

Since intermediate goods play such a vital role in foreign trade, this paper develops a model that explains the benefits from intraindustry trade in differentiated intermediate goods. In comparison with a situation of autarchy, this type of trade causes an increase in the number of intermediate good varieties. In this way, the producers of final goods will benefit from intermediate good varieties, which are closer to the ideal for a specific production process. At the same time, the producers of intermediate goods will, under conditions of international division of labor, benefit from economies of scale.     

Marginal Intraindustry Trade and Labor Adjustment

In the context of Ethier's model of the division of labor, this paper accomplishes three tasks. First, it complements existing literature on the algebraic properties of marginal intraindustry trade (MIIT) measures by embedding one of these measures in a general equilbrium model. Consistent with the existing literature, it is found that change in the Grubel–Lloyd index provides systematically different economic information from change in the MIIT index. Second, it examines the connection between intraindustry trade and intra- industry adjustment. Here it is found that the informal assumption that intraindustry trade generates only intraindustry adjustment cannot be sustained. That is, intraindustry trade will generally induce interindustry adjustment. Finally, because intraindustry trade generates interindustry adjustment, increased intraindustry trade will generally induce long-run changes in relative factor prices. This suggests, given the prominence of intraindustry trade in OECD countries, that there may be problems with inference on the link between rade and wages undertaken in a strict Heckscher–Ohlin framework.     

Trade and Global Income Inequality with Frictional Labor Markets: A Lesson from the Canada–US Free Trade Agreement

This paper develops a two-country trade model with frictional labor market structures to investigate the link between increased openness to trade and cross-country income inequality. Calibrated to US–Canadian data, the model simulation results show that the Canada–US Free Trade Agreement benefited Canada, the country with relatively higher capital intensity, more due to its capacity to flexibly expand in response to an increase in product demand. The results from counterfactual experiments indicate that increased capital intensity in the US is expected to increase gains from trade in both countries while making the distribution of gains less unequal.     

The gains from trade revisited

This paper revisits the issue of whether countries gain more from trading with countries that are similar to themselves, or with countries that are different. A model based on relative endowment and technological differences across countries is developed. The main result is that a country may experience a region of increasing gains from trade as its trading partner becomes more similar to itself in terms of relative endowments. The model also predicts that for countries with sufficiently similar relative endowments, both factors of production may experience gains from trade.