Technological progress and market growth: An empirical study based on the quality-ladder approach

This paper develops an extended version of the quality-adder model by allowing for heterogeneous markets. Based on this model, it presents an empirical analysis of innovation-based growth at the market level using a technometric measurement concept. It can be shown that a growth-promoting effect due to technological progress in a particular single year is observed after between 2 and up to 7 years. This is true not only for highly innovative markets but also for those in which fewer R&D resources are invested.     

Trade and the Euro: effects on bystanders

This article investigates trade effects of the euro focusing on the impact on bystanders. We use data for Swedish firms and examine the impact on exporting firms’ intensive and extensive margins of trade. Our result shows an overall increase in Swedish firms’ exports to the euro area after the introduction of the single currency, indicating that the euro has decreased trade costs also for outsiders. In addition, we find important heterogeneity in the sample, suggesting that it is the large majority of small firms that has increased trade flows with the Eurozone the most.     

How trade and capital restrictions affect the probability of a balance of trade disturbance

Free market economists argue that national authorities avoid restrictions on the free movement of goods, services and financial capital between countries. Yet, countries continually choose to restrict the flow of capital both into and out of the country. Why is this done? Is it done to protect the domestic banking system, to control the domestic money supply, to manage the exchange rate, to provide stability for internal markets or to avoid wide swings in the availability of capital? Are these controls effective in precluding wide swings in a country's international trade balance? This article uses panel data in a logit model to analyse policy choice with respect to an international trade and/or investment regime. The goal is to identify choices effective in reducing the likelihood of a severe Balance of Trade Disturbance (BTD) and determine if the appropriate choice is related to per capita income (pci).     

On the growth and welfare effects of monopolistic distortions

The most fundamental proposition about growth and competition is that there is a tradeoff between static welfare and long-term growth. This paper reconsiders this basic proposition in an expanding variety endogenous growth model with competitive markets for “old” innovative products and for a traditional good. We shed light on some implications of monopolistic distortions which tend to be ignored by standard models. First, no growth may be better than some growth, since modest positive growth potentially requires sizeable static welfare losses. Second, the economy may converge to a steady state with zero growth, even though a locally saddle-point stable steady state with positive growth exists if the initial share of “cheap” competitive markets is sufficiently high, as this implies a relatively low demand for “expensive” innovative goods. Third, such a “no-growth trap” may happen in a world economy made up of several countries engaged in free trade with each other. The policy implications are that growth-enhancing policies may be misguided and that quick deregulation as well as quick trade liberalization can lead to stagnation in the long term.      

Testing creative destruction in an opening economy

This paper analyses the relationship between trade liberalization and economic growth using a Schumpeterian framework of technological innovation and applies it to sector‐level South African data. The framework examines direct and indirect effects of trade liberalization on productivity growth. Indirect impacts operate through a differential impact of trade liberalization on firms conditional on their distance from the international technological frontier. Results confirm positive direct impacts of trade liberalization. Results confirm also that the greatest positive impact of trade liberalization will be on sectors that are close to the international technological frontier and that experienced a low level of product market competition before liberalization.     

出口强度、资本密集度对中国出口企业自选择效应和学习效应的影响

现有研究关于出口企业自选择效应和学习效应的检验常常忽视企业的微观特征。本文通过对中国大样本微观面板数据进行统计分析和计量检验表明：国内出口企业存在生产率的静态优势,不存在“生产率悖论”。总体层面上,出口企业存在自选择效应,并且这种自选择效应对各种所有制企业和不同资本密集度企业均存在。在考虑国内外市场进入成本的情况下,高生产率的企业选择同时进入国内外两个市场,表现出自选择效应;而低生产率、高出口强度的企业选择进入国外市场,不存在自选择现象。,此外,短期内持续出口企业的学习效应为负,并且各种所有制企业的学习效应稳健为负,怛高资本密集度企业的出口学习负效应能快速扭转为正,出口强度低于50％的企业学习效应显著为正。     

Free Trade, Growth, and Convergence

Can trade liberalization have a permanent affect on output levels, and more important, does it have an impact on steady-state growth rates? The model emphasizes the role that knowledge spillovers emanating from heightened trade can have on income convergence and growth rates during transition and over the long run. Among the results of the model, unilateral liberalization by one country reduces the income gap between the liberalizing country and other, wealthier countries. From the long-run growth perspective, unilateral (and multilateral) liberalization generates a positive impact on the steady-state growth of all the trading countries.     

Is there Evidence of Learning‐by‐Exporting in Turkish Manufacturing Industries?

Exporting has always been thought of as one tool to improve productivity and, consequently, to spur economic growth in low‐ to middle‐income economies. However, empirical evidence of this so‐called ‘learning‐by‐exporting’ effect has been limited. This article determines whether learning‐by‐exporting is evident in two Turkish manufacturing sectors—the textile and apparel (T&A) and the motor vehicle and parts (MV&P) industries. A semi‐parametric estimator that controls for problems associated with simultaneity and unobserved plant heterogeneity is used to test the learning‐by‐exporting hypothesis. After controlling for these issues, our results suggest statistically stronger learning‐by‐exporting effects in the T&A than in the MV&P industry. The highly concentrated and capital‐intensive nature of the MV&P industry is the main reason for the lower learning‐by‐exporting effect in this sector. From a policy perspective, this implies that targeting export‐enhancing policies to industries with significant learning‐by‐exporting effects may lead to more productivity gains and would better stimulate an export‐led growth.     

Economic Deregulation and Trade Liberalization in Kenya,Tanzania and Uganda: Growth and Poverty

With economic growth as a principal target, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda have implemented deregulation and trade liberalization policies. By tracing the trends in major economic aggregates, the progress of these economies is reviewed. While acknowledging the conceptual arguments supporting the measures adopted, constraints in both the international economy and domestically have resulted in disappointing outcomes. International trade rules and practices, particularly in the agricultural sector, have worked against all three countries. Moreover, their domestic economies lack crucial resources. The results suggest that it may be a long time before the deregulation policies lead to a reduction in poverty.     

金融发展与出口贸易间的双向影响机制

建立两个数学模型分析了发展中国家金融发展与出口贸易间的双向影响机制。理论模型显示：金融发展通过影响一国资本密集型出口行业比较优势促进出口结构优化;贸易开放通过增加一国资本、技术密集型行业融资需求,直接推动一国金融发展。研究为金融与出口贸易协调发展提供了理论支持,可为统筹金融与贸易政策的制定提供决策参考。     

Strategic policies and growth: an applied model of R&D-driven endogenous growth

We introduce and explore a general equilibrium model with R&D-driven endogenous growth, whose antecedents are the models of Romer (1990) [Romer, P.M., 1990. Endogenous technological change. Journal of Political Economy, 98, S71-102] and Grossman and Helpman (1991) [Grossman, G.M., Helpman E., 1991. Innovation and Growth in the Global Economy, The MIT Press, Cambridge]. Utilizing evidence from recent econometric studies on sources of growth, the model also accounts explicitly for cross-border technological spillovers. The model is specified and calibrated to data from Japan, and is solved to obtain both the transitional and the steady-state equilibria. We explore the effects of selective trade and R&D promotion policies on long-run growth and social welfare. The model results suggest that while a strategic trade policy has little effect on re-allocating resources into domestic R&D activities, it can significantly affect the cross-border spillovers of technological knowledge, which, in turn, stimulates growth. We find that trade liberalization may cause the growth rate to fall and lead to a loss of social welfare in the long-run, although it improves welfare in the short-run. R&D promotion policies stimulate growth by inducing private agents to allocate more resources to domestic R&D, as well as to take greater advantage of global R&D spillovers. Here, we find significantly high growth effects together with sizable gains in social welfare at low incidence to tax payers.     

Firm heterogeneity and trade-induced layoffs: An empirical investigation

We use a novel data set with verified observations of trade-induced layoffs by U.S. firms to study the interaction between firm productivity and trade liberalization as key determinants of firm-level job destruction due to trade. We find that patterns of trade-induced layoffs are broadly consistent with the predictions for firm-level employment generated by the Melitz (2003) heterogeneous firms theory – the number of trade-induced layoffs increases with firm productivity for non-exporting firms but decreases with firm productivity for exporting firms. The fact that exporting firms incur trade-induced layoffs at all invites a refined interpretation of the theory. Our findings suggest that exporting firms may lay off some workers who work in production for their shrinking domestic segments, while also engaging in some within-firm reallocation of workers. We also find that, even after controlling for productivity and export status, larger firms lay off more workers due to trade competition.     

Competition policy vs. industrial policy as a growth strategy

ABSTRACT

This paper shows that competition policy, rather than industrial policy, generated the rapid economic growth in post-war Japan. It also reveals that Japan’s growth rate was lowered from the mid-1970s due to newly introduced industrial policies and paucity of further competition policy. The current Abe government recognises the need for competition policies in Japan to recover from the low-growth period. The paper describes the types of competition policy carried out under Abenomics, especially in National Strategic Special Zones.Abbreviations: METI: Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry NSSZ: National Strategic Special Zones     

全球贸易自由化下的环境问题与环境政策

在全球贸易自由化的进程中，对环境既产生了正的影响，也产生了负的影响。但贸易不是产生环境问题的根源，所以不能靠制定与贸易有关的环境政策来解决，而应当在环境污染的发生地实施有关的环境政策，使“外部化”了的费用，纳入生产者的成本中，这才是真正的贸易比较优势。     

Services liberalization and productivity of manufacturing firms

Employing a unique database of Ukrainian firms in 2001–07, we use the external push for liberalization in the services sector as a source of exogenous variation to identify the effect of services liberalization on total factor productivity (TFP) of manufacturing firms. The results indicate that a standard deviation increase in services liberalization within a firm is associated with a 9.2 percent increase in TFP. The effect is stronger for firms with high productivity, bringing about a reallocation of resources within an industry. Industry‐level results show that the effect of reallocation on industry productivity is almost as strong as the within‐firm effect. The dynamic interaction of services liberalization and TFP through the investment channel reinforces the effect. The effect is robust to different estimation methods and to different sub‐samples of the data. In particular, it is more pronounced for domestic and small firms.     

Competing Industrial Standards and the Impact of Trade Liberalization

The main purpose of this study is to illustrate, with simple trade theory, the relationship between competing industrial standards and trade liberalization. We assume that there are two competing industrial standards in an international context, each of which applies to a group of differentiated products. A product can be used only in combination with other products based on the same industrial standard. We examine the impact of trade liberalization (i.e., a decline in trade costs) on consumers’ choice of a standard. It will be shown that the degree of indirect network effects, captured with substitution between differentiated products, plays an important role as a determinant of the impact of trade liberalization.     

Global Value Chains,Horizontal Intra-Industry Trade and the Heterogeneous Firm

This paper examines global value chains at the level of the heterogeneous firm. The context is a world of horizontal intra-industry trade, characterized by imperfect competition and product differentiation at the firm level. Standard microeconomic tools are employed to assess the effects of inter-firm dissimilarities in both demand and supply on firms’ responses to changes in trade policy. In this set-up, dissimilarities in firm characteristics play roles similar to factor endowments and technology differences in traditional trade models. When cross-border production sharing (“fragmentation”) is introduced into this framework, those differences in firm characteristics determine the degree to which individual firms will enter into production networks. In this context, horizontal and vertical intra-industry trade elements interact in their effects on firm decisions. Traditional comparative advantage considerations still govern the choice of off-shored activities, while direct competition between imports and exports expands the range of possible outcomes. Finally, it is shown that cross-border production sharing reduces the sensitivity of firms to variations in exchange rates, matching a phenomenon that has been observed in traditional country-level models.     

异质性企业贸易理论的起源与发展

本文旨在系统性地探究异质性企业贸易理论的起源与发展过程。首先对促使该理论诞生的实证挑战从企业的选择性出口、市场进入成本、资源再分配三个方面进行了综述;然后指出该理论发展的两条脉络和各自的理论基础,并在此基础上从平均生产率和贸易利得两个角度阐述了异质性企业贸易理论和新贸易理论之间的紧密联系,二者最大的差别便在于对边际生产成本的处理上,前者以边际成本的异质性替代企业的异质性,后者则忽略了企业之间的异质性。同时,针对国内学者的一些认识,本文也提出了自己的看法。     

Sizing Up the Impact of Embassies on Exports

The purpose of this study is to test for the effects of trade promotion via the foreign service. The theory of trade with heterogeneous firms predicts that unilateral trade promotion allows medium‐sized firms to export. We investigate the effects of trade promotion using firm‐level data and information on the opening and closing of embassies abroad from the very similar neighboring countries Sweden and Norway. We use a difference‐in‐difference specification where firms from Norway are used as a control group for Swedish firms. Our results show that large firms as well as medium‐sized firms respond to the opening of embassies.     

不同出口密集度企业的出口工资溢价——来自中国的证据

在异质性企业理论框架下,运用中国工业企业数据库构建的平衡面板数据研究发现,我国出口工资溢价与不同出口密集度企业密切相关。进一步检验表明,一般出口企业持续出口的工资溢价与民营企业出口有关。因此,促进一般贸易企业出口,降低加工出口企业的比重,特别在一般出口企业中,提高民营企业的出口密集度,推动民营企业的持续出口,将改善我国的出口工资溢价。