Trade and trade policy with differentiated products: A Chamberlinian – Ricardian model. A comment

Abstract

This paper shows that the results of Venables (1987 Venables, A. 1987. Trade and trade policy with differentiated products: a Chamberlinian – Ricardian model. The Economic Journal, 97: 700–717. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) depend critically on the assumption that there are no fixed costs of trade. The introduction of fixed costs of exporting, while making the model more consistent with the empirical evidence, leads to the opposite conclusion that technological progress in one country cannot harm the welfare of its trading partner. However, the results can be obtained in a richer setting with heterogeneous firms.     

谈进口资本品的双重效应与技术进步——基于2001-2009年中国省际面板数据分析

利用我国27个省市区2001—2009年的面板数据,采用动态面板数据模型分析方法,对进口资本品影响技术进步的双重效应、滞后效应与间接效应进行实证分析。结果显示,进口资本品对TFP的影响具有双重效应,进口资本品与TFP呈倒"U"型关系;在研究样本期内,进口资本品对TFP的负面影响占主导地位,其数量已超过最优值,此时再增加资本品进口会导致TFP下降。滞后一期的进口资本品能够促进技术进步。进口资本品还通过人力资本、FDI等间接渠道对技术进步产生积极影响。     

Does Technological Innovation Really Reduce Marginal Abatement Costs? Some Theory,Algebraic Evidence,and Policy Implications

The existing literature models innovation in pollution control as a reduction in marginal abatement costs. We show that this assumption is inappropriate for production process innovations such as fuel switching. Algebraically, we examine the effects of different innovation types on marginal abatement cost curves, showing that some desirable innovations increase marginal abatement costs. Empirically, we estimate marginal abatement costs for sulfur dioxide by measuring the output distance function for electric power in Korea. Regression results confirm that production process innovations did raise marginal abatement costs in this case. One policy implication: economic instruments do not always provide stronger innovation incentives than command-and-control policies.      

重大自然灾害资金筹措及其配置问题研究——源于汶川地震灾害的思考

5·12汶川地震给受灾地区人民生命财产造成了巨大损失,灾难过后,国家迅速筹措各方资金投入应急救灾、安置和灾后重建工作。赈灾筹资渠道应以国家财政角度、金融信贷角度、社会捐赠三方面为主,对赈灾资金筹措必须进行科学管理,完善管理办法。要充分发挥社会舆论监督作用,并从思想上正确认识各种筹资渠道在不同时期的主辅关系和作用,从而适时调整赈灾资金筹措策略和重点,实现赈灾资金筹措与需求的合理匹配。     

A functional approach for studying technological progress: Extension to energy technology

This paper extends a broad functional category approach for the study of technological capability progress recently developed and applied to information technology to a second key case—that of energy based technologies. The approach is applied to the same three functional operations—storage, transportation and transformation—that were used for information technology by first building a 100 plus year database for each of the three energy-based functional categories. In agreement with the results for information technology in the first paper, the energy technology results indicate that the functional approach offers a stable methodology for assessing longer time technological progress trends. Moreover, similar to what was found with information technology in the first study, the functional capability for energy technology shows continual—if not continuous—improvement that is best quantitatively described as exponential with respect to time. The absence of capability discontinuities—even with large technology displacement—and the lack of clear saturation effects are found with energy as it was with information. However, some key differences between energy and information technology are seen and these include:

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Lower rates of progress for energy technology over the entire period: 19-37% annually for Information Technology and 3-13% for Energy Technology.

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Substantial variability of progress rates is found within given functional categories for energy compared to relatively small variation within any one category for information technology. The strongest variation is found among capability progress among different energy types.

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More challenging data recovery and metric definition for energy as compared to information technology.

These findings are interpreted in terms of fundamental differences between energy and information including the losses and efficiency constraints on energy. We apply Whitney's insight that these fundamental differences lead to naturally modular information technology artifacts. The higher progress rates of information-based as opposed to energy-based technologies follows since decomposable systems can progress more rapidly due to the greater ease of independent as opposed to simultaneous development. In addition, the broad implications of our findings to studies of the relationships between technical and social change are briefly discussed.     

Technological diversification, complementary assets, and performance

Most research on technological diversification or complementary assets has been carried out in isolation when assessing their effects on performance. In this study, we posit that technological diversification and performance are positively linked and that specialized complementary assets have a moderating effect on this relationship. This study also finds that different specialized complementary assets have distinctive moderating effects on the relationship between technological diversification and performance. We conclude that maintaining a coherent relationship between technological diversification and specialized complementary assets give firms generates competitive advantage.     

Exploring technology paths: The development of alternative transport fuels in Sweden 2007-2020

By using socio-technical scenarios, we investigate how present policy choices may affect the development of alternative transport fuels in Sweden. One important choice for policy lies in the balance between general tax exemptions stimulating the market for alternative fuels, and funding of research and development more directly promoting new technology. The implications of this choice are illustrated with four diverging development paths until 2020. In the market-oriented scenarios, we illustrate consequences of breaking the dominance of entrenched technologies and demonstrating a growing market potential for alternatives, but also the risks with a large focus on first generation renewable fuels. In the technology-oriented scenarios, we point out the value of keeping variety among niches in this stage of the transition. In conclusion, if policy is implemented without taking the dynamic forces within the system into account, there is a risk that any measure leads the system into a dead end. But if policy strives to balance the development in different parts of the technological system while making use of various prevailing forces of change, a multitude of different efforts can contribute to the development of a more sustainable transport system.     

On using relative prices to measure capital-specific technological progress

Recently, Greenwood, Hercowitz and Krusell (GHK) have identified the relative price of (new) capital with capital-specific technological progress. In a two-sector growth model, however, the relative price of capital equals the ratio of the productivity processes in the two sectors. Restrictions from this model are used with data on wages and prices to construct measures of productivity growth and test the GHK identification, which is easily rejected by the data. This raises questions about various measures of the contribution that capital-specific technological progress might make to the economy. This identification also induces a negative correlation between the resulting measures of capital-specific and economy-wide technological change, which potentially explains why papers employing this identification find that capital-specific technological change accelerated in the mid-1970s. We impose structure on the productivity measures based on their long-run behavior and find evidence of a slowdown in productivity in the 1970s that is common to both sectors and an acceleration in the mid-1990s that is exclusive to the capital sector.     

Vertical Innovation and Catching-Up: Implications of EU Integration for CEECs-5

We analyze the role of vertical innovation in trade patterns for developing economies trading with technologically advanced countries. A model is presented where the international diffusion of knowledge, promoted by economic integration, is the source of a technological catching up and leads to a convergence in the quality of traded goods, with a positive effect on exports. We then turn our attention on the evolution of trade between the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs-5) and their European Union partner countries, assessing whether economic integration has increase the quality of the goods produced. For the period 1995–2005, we find evidence of the increasing role of intra-industry trade and vertical differentiation and a process of specialization in higher quality products, especially in the medium- and high-skill sectors.

The American frontier: Technology versus immigration

How important was international immigration for the US and its demography during the nineteenth century? This paper investigates, quantitatively, its effect on the westward movement of population and the regional and secular changes in fertility. Beside immigration, two alternative forces are considered: technological progress and the land policy (the Homestead Act). An optimal growth model with endogenous fertility and migration is calibrated, and counterfactual experiments reveal that the main driving forces were productivity growth and the declining cost of transportation. International immigration played a lesser role.