Commodity currencies

This paper looks at real exchange rate behavior by focusing on three OECD economies (Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) where primary commodities constitute a significant share of their exports. For Australia and New Zealand especially, we find that the US dollar price of their commodity exports (generally exogenous to these small economies) has a strong and stable influence on their floating real rates, with the magnitude of the effects consistent with predictions of standard theoretical models. However, after controlling for commodity price shocks, there is still a purchasing power parity puzzle in the residual. The results here are relevant to developing commodity-exporting countries as they liberalize their capital markets and move towards floating exchange rates.     

Analysis of the Trade Dispute of Chinese Agricultural Products and Its Countermeasures

The trade dispute of agricultural products has become one of the hot issues that international community has paid close attention to for three years. This paper analyzes the current dispute situation, the characters and the causes in international export trade. It also points out how the government, enterprises and employer＇s organizations deal with the trade dispute of agricultural products.     

Trade intensity,country size and corruption

Abstract. Several authors claim to provide evidence that governmental corruption is less severe in countries where trade intensity is higher or populations are smaller. We argue that theory is highly ambiguous on these questions, and demonstrate that empirical links between corruption and trade intensity – or country size, strongly related to trade intensity – are sensitive to sample selection bias. Most available corruption indicators provide ratings only for those countries in which multinational investors have the greatest interest: these tend to include almost all large nations, but among small nations only those that are well-governed. We find that the relationship between corruption and trade intensity disappears, using newer corruption indicators with substantially increased country coverage. Similarly, the relationship between corruption and country size weakens or disappears using samples less subject to selection bias. Received: July 2001 / accepted: April 2002 We thank Anand Swamy and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions, Paul Schorosch for able research assistance, and Ray Fisman, Roberta Gatti, Aart Kraay, and Shang-jin Wei for kindly providing data. The conclusions of this paper are not intended to represent the views of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent.     

Environmental standards as barriers to trade

This paper examines the case of a good, polluting in consumption, whose pollutive content is restricted by a government with strong environmental policies. When foreign producers are unable to comply with the restrictive environmental standard of such a country, to which they wish to export, they often allege that those standards constitute illegal barriers to free trade. An example of such a good is gasoline, excessively pollutive formulations of which are prohibited from importation into the United States by the 1970 Clean Air Act. Rather than banning them, such imports should be taxed, along with the domestically produced substitute good, according to their respective pollutant contents. This would foster economic efficiency and should be more acceptable to foreign producers than the outright prohibition mandated by the Clean Air Act. The results of this paper reaffirm the argument in a previous article in this journal (Socio-Economic Planning Sciences 29 (1995) 187), though the countries’ roles in the two papers are reversed, that free trade and Pigouvian environmental policies increase international welfare.     

Infrastructure provision and international market share rivalry

The paper examines a model of strategic infrastructure investment. Two oligopolistic firms compete on home and foreign product markets for market shares. The national governments support the firms in the market rivalry by providing cost reducing public infrastructure services that are financed out of taxing an input used in the production process. It is shown, that infrastructure policy can be used as an instrument for strategic trade policy. However, governments are facing the problem of balancing the burden of taxation and the benefits of infrastructures. The theoretical model also raises some critical issues with respect to the policy relevance of recent empirical infrastructure research.     

服务贸易发展的宏观政策战略转变分析

顺应全球产业结构的发展变化趋势,做好中国服务贸易发展的战略准备。作者提出了中国宏观经济发展思路和宏观经济发展政策的八个战略转变建议及具有针对性的有关中国服务贸易发展的五大产业政策转变对策。     

Outsourcing and trade in a spatial world

This paper provides an analysis of outsourcing and trade in a spatial model à la Hotelling. In this setting, we discuss the trade-off between transport-cost-related disadvantages and outsourcing-related production cost advantages of a large economy and we investigate how the existence of national transport costs influences both the structure of industrial production and the pattern of final goods trade. In addition, the model gives a rich picture of the possible welfare effects of trade liberalization. In particular, we show that a final goods exporting country definitely gains from economic integration, while a final goods importing country may lose. Finally, when lowering domestic outsourcing activities, trade liberalization may reduce world welfare, even if pro-competitive effects lead to a decline in consumer prices.     

对我国技术引进消化吸收与创新问题的思考

技术引进是迅速提升我国技术水平的有效捷径,本文在分析必须重视引进技术消化吸收和创新的基础上,分析了我国农业引进技术消化吸收和创新的主要制约因素,提出了加强引进技术消化吸收和创新工作的对策.     

Trade matters except to war neighbors: The international stock market reaction to 2022 Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

We investigate the role of international trade and proximity to war in international stock markets during the invasion of Ukraine by employing DiD designs and panel data comprising 70 stock markets. We find that differences in trade exposure to warring countries (trade effect) have a substantial and negative impact on non-European equity markets but are irrelevant for European markets. In contrast, differences in the distance to warring countries (proximity effect) have a significant and negative impact on European markets but have no bearing on non-European markets. We find that the relevance of rent from mineral, natural gas, and oil resources and the relevance of metals, ores, and fuels in exports operate as mitigators of the trade effect. Our paper provides valuable empirical evidence regarding the importance of mitigating the vulnerability of financial markets to international trade when a major war breaks out.     

论多边贸易体制下的绿色壁垒

该文首先分析绿色壁垒的成因、特点及表现形式,接着指出了WTO中涉及到绿色壁垒问题的相关规定,最后指出我国面对绿色壁垒的应对措施.