Does firm size matter in exporting and using FTA schemes?

In this paper, we empirically compare the role of firm size when exporting with that when using free trade agreement (FTA) schemes. We employ a unique survey providing detailed information on FTA use by Japanese affiliates in ASEAN, India, and Oceania. Our findings from the analysis on Japanese affiliates in ASEAN are as follows. First, firm size matters in both decisions on exporting and on using FTA schemes. In particular, firm size is more quantitatively important in decisions on FTA use than on exporting. Second, firms with experience in utilizing FTAs for exporting have an approximately 40% higher probability of using an FTA for exporting to a new country. Third, larger-sized firms use a larger number of FTA schemes.     

Does fiscal policy really matter in the context of variable prices?

Blinder and Solow's crowding-out analysis is extended by allowing wealth effects of debt accumulation on both aggregate demand and aggregate supply. Two questions are reexamined; (1) the compatibility relationship between the long-run stability and the sign of the instantaneous money and bond multipliers, and (2) the long-run relative expansionary effect of bond financing. Without capital accumulation, real crowding-out may become compatible with stability under both money and bond financing, while nominal crowding-out is not. Normally, this is also true with capital accumulation. Furthermore, bond financing is not necessarily more expansionary than money financing in either real or nominal terms.     

How Does FDI Affect Productivity at Home?: Evidence from a Plant-Level Analysis

This study investigates the effect of foreign direct investments (FDI) on home productivity using plant-level data rather than firm-level data. Our results are consistent with the theoretical predictions. Horizontal FDI (HFDI) does not have a significantly positive effect on home productivity in plants that have the same activities abroad. In contrast, vertical FDI (VFDI) significantly enhances productivity in plants with an input–output relationship with activities relocated abroad. Furthermore, focusing on FDI in East Asia, the productivity improvements at home through VFDI are even greater, which might be caused by significant differences in factor prices between Japan and host countries.     

Empirical Analysis of Brands: A Survey

In this paper, we survey the empirical analysis of brands. The difficulty in this area of research is that even though a brand is easily identifiable, its economic roles are not directly observable. We first discuss methods where the effect of a brand is measured as the unobservable component of sales or price of a product, which researchers recover as a residual of the sales or price regression. We then describe the approaches to estimate the various roles of brands, such as providing information and increasing the utility of consumption. Finally, we provide examples of research that highlight the role of brands in exploiting the irrationality of consumers for profit.     

Balance sheet identity and Walras' Law

The balance sheet identity is interpreted to imply that if n ? 1 of n assets are in stock equilibrium, so is the remaining asset. Under the notion of the end-of-period equilibrium, the following are shown. (1) This interpretation leads to the contradiction that the system does not allow enough independent equilibrium relations to determine uniquely the equilibrium values of its endogenous variables. (2) The balance sheet identity is equivalent to Walras' Law in flow form. Thus, Foley's methodological precept is verified; transforming a period model into its continuous time analogue does not lead to different outcomes from period analysis.     

The Permanent Income–Life Cycle Hypothesis in a Monetary Economy and the Neutrality of Money: A Continuous-Time Analysis

This paper addresses the viability of the permanent income– life cycle hypothesis in a monetary economy in which money enters the utility function of infinitely lived agents. Two forms of the hypothesis are distinguished: weak and strong. Deriving the Keynes–Ramsey rule of consumption under preferences of the Uzawa–Epstein recursive class and examining the optimal consumption–wealth relation, the paper studies the restrictions that these forms impose on the utility functional, identifies the necessary and sufficient conditions for the hypothesis to hold, and clarifies how such conditions are related to the neutrality of money.
JEL Classification Numbers: D91, E21, E40, C61.     

Trade Creation Effects of Regional Trade Agreements: Tariff Reduction versus Non‐tariff Barrier Removal

This study uses the most disaggregated tariff line‐level trade data in a large number of countries in the world to empirically decompose the trade creation effects of regional trade agreements (RTAs) into those owing to tariff reduction and those owing to non‐tariff barrier (NTB) removal. Specifically, utilizing our detailed dataset, we employ the standard gravity equation and identify those effects by estimating the trade creation effects of RTAs for ineligible and eligible products for RTA preferential schemes separately. Our major findings are as follows. First, for the whole sample, there are significantly positive trade creation effects owing to tariff reduction while the effects for NTB removal are weak. Second, the trade creation effects of tariff reduction and NTB removal are substantially large in the case of trade among low‐income countries but weak among high‐income countries.     

Impacts of common rules of origin on FTA utilization

This study empirically examines the impacts of sharing rules of origin (RoOs) with other ASEAN?+?1 free trade agreements (FTAs) on ASEAN–Korea FTA/ASEAN–China FTA utilization in Thai exports in 2011. Our detailed empirical analysis suggests that the harmonization of RoOs across FTAs plays some role in terms of reducing the costs yielded through the spaghetti bowl phenomenon. In particular, the harmonization to “change-in-tariff classification (CTC) or regional value content (RVC)” will play a relatively positive role in not seriously discouraging firms’ use of multiple FTA schemes. In contrast, harmonization to “CTC” or “CTC and RVC” hinders firms from using those schemes.     

GLOBALIZATION AND PRODUCTIVITY: A SURVEY OF FIRM‐LEVEL ANALYSIS

Abstract Recent empirical studies which utilize plant‐ or establishment‐level data to examine globalization's impact on productivity have discovered many causal mechanisms involved in globalization's impact on firms’ productivity. Because these pathways have been broad, there have been few attempts to summarize the several and detailed mechanisms of self‐selection and learning at the same time. This paper examines seven pathways so that the clear‐cut consequences of the broad picture of globalization become visible. This strategy is useful for detecting missing links within and across the existing studies as well as for finding possible synergy effects among different mechanisms. Insightful policy implications may be derived from the comprehensive comparisons between the seven different pathways of globalization.