Can the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership minimise the harm from the United States–China trade war?

Using ex post tariff schedules for the first time, it was found that the global gains provided by the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) are not enough to overcome the negative impacts of the United States–China trade dispute. While trade tensions cause China's welfare loss to be more than twice as large as the United States, they provide some trade diversion to RCEP members. But of concern is if India successfully delays the conclusion of the RCEP even by a year, there will be a global loss of US$17.7 billion. The RCEP is also beneficial for the emerging economy of Vietnam and the high‐tariff‐imposing Korean economy. The results obtained here are, however, conservative as reduction in non‐tariff barriers and other positive spillover effects of trade liberalisation related to investment and productivity improvements due to competition or increased intra‐industry trade could not be accounted for.     

Appropriate assumption on cross-hauling national input–output table regionalization

Input–output tables are useful for regional economic analyses. Although scholars often regionalize national input–output tables, cost-related issues make surveying regional trade flow difficult; hence, non-survey approaches are implemented instead. While location quotient (LQ) approaches have been used widely, they ignore cross-hauling in interregional trade. Therefore, alternative non-survey approaches with different assumptions on cross-hauling are used, such as cross-hauling depends on regional size and cross-hauling is proportional to its potential determined by output or demand. This study concludes that the most appropriate assumption, as per the relative performance of non-survey approaches, is that cross-hauling is in proportion to trade volume.     

Consumer engagement behaviors in the online wildlife trade: Implications for conservationists

This study investigates consumer engagement behaviors in the online wildlife trade, drawing implications for conservationists. The first study undertook a quantitative content analysis of 500 Facebook posts in wildlife trade lateral exchange markets to show how creative strategies, media type and persuasion tactics influence the number of likes and comments that posts receive. The second study then undertook a thematic discourse analysis to develop a rich understanding of the culture, beliefs and motivations that influence how consumers engage in the markets. Findings showed that an overwhelming majority of posts use a functional or informational strategy and that when posts use overt persuasion tactics the number of comments decrease. A conceptual model of how cultural factors may impact the success of marketing strategies is then proposed. These findings have implications for conservationists who seek to build engagement with wildlife trade consumers online.     

经济改革对技术创新能力的影响--基于中国1987～2013年数据的协整分析

本文采用中国1987～2013年的宏观经济数据，对经济改革与技术创新能力之间的关系进行了深入的研究。研究结果表明，经济改革与技术创新能力之间存在单向因果关系，经济改革是技术创新能力变化的原因；长期均衡状态下，技术创新能力提升的近30％可由经济改革解释；短期中，经济改革的短期波动对技术创新能力短期波动的影响在所有的短期波动中占主导地位。     

The global faces of China’s incomplete reforms: a perspective from China’s new intellectual property regime

ABSTRACT

The paper probes into an antithetical aspect of China’s economic reforms in the global context by focusing on the recent developments of China’s intellectual property regime. By analyzing this cutting-edge legal system, it highlights China’s political divergence against its economic convergence in its decade-long reforms, in particular, its state-oriented innovation system as against the world’s neo-liberal economic order. The last decade witnessed China’s preeminent transformation from a passive follower to a proactive advocator of IP standards. However, certain entrenched limits characterizing China’s state-oriented economy and cultural systems such as information blockade and coercive technology transfer serve as catalysts that are apt to provoke acrimonious confrontation between China and major economies. In this sense, China’s incomplete reforms have taken on a new form: as China’s influence on the global economy grows, conflicts of diverse national priorities become more palpable than simple-minded economic cooperation.     

Trade Liberalization and Environmental Taxation in Federal Systems

The literature on trade liberalization and environment has not yet considered federal structures. In this paper, we show how the design of environmental policy in a federal system has implications for the effects of trade reform. Trade liberalization leads to a decline in pollution taxes, regardless of whether pollution taxes are set at the federal (centralized) or local (decentralized) level, and it increases social welfare. The effect under a decentralized system is smaller than if these taxes are set by the federal government, and pollution emissions therefore decline in this case. Moreover, majority bias interacts with trade liberalization if federal taxes are used.     

Financial analyst coverage for U.S. firms facing foreign competition: Evidence from trade liberalization

This study examines financial analyst coverage for U.S. firms following an increase in foreign product market competition. To capture exogenous shocks to domestic firms' competitive environments, we exploit a quasi‐natural experiment from large import tariff reductions over the 1984 to 2005 period in the manufacturing sector. Using data for the years before and after large tariff reductions, our difference‐in‐differences analysis shows evidence of a significant decrease in analyst coverage for incumbent U.S. firms when they face greater entry threat from foreign competitors. We also find that analysts with less firm‐specific experience and less accurate prior‐period forecasts are more likely to stop following the domestic firm when foreign competition intensifies. Overall, the findings suggest that foreign product market competition from global trade liberalization is an important determinant of financial analysts' coverage decisions.     

Trade shocks,product mix adjustment and productivity growth in Italian manufacturing

In this paper, we use firm-level data on the universe of Italian manufacturing multi-product exporters to test whether demand shocks in export markets lead multi-product exporters to increase their productivity. The main mechanism behind the documented productivity gains is the reallocation of resources across products within firms (American Economic Review, 104, 2014 and 495; National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series No. 22433, 2016). Intuitively, the increased demand stemming from foreign markets will induce firms to adjust their product mix by moving inputs from low to high productive/profitable uses. We find that these productivity gains are significant and can explain between 1/10 and 1/2 of aggregate productivity growth in the manufacturing sector.     

国内外电力建设工程竣工移交条件差异及合同纠纷分析

国内外电力建设工程竣工移交时,在性能试验责任主体、时间、试验项目等多方面存在较多差异,进而导致了工程投入商业运行、颁发移交生产交接书、缺陷责任期起始和结束等诸多时间的不一致,这些差异和不一致可能引起业主与EPC承包商之间的合同纠纷。本文对上述差异和可能引起的纠纷进行了分析,并提出对策和建议。     

Impacts of Australia’s free trade agreements on trade in agricultural products: an aggregative and disaggregative analysis

The importance of free trade agreements (FTAs) has been increasing as such agreements help reduce barriers to trade. This paper estimates the agricultural trade creation and export diversion effects of Australia’s free trade agreements (FTAs) at the aggregate and disaggregate levels, using the Poisson pseudo‐maximum‐likelihood (PPML) estimator. It includes 24 of Australia’s major trading partner countries comprising FTA and non‐FTA members and covers 22 years from 1996 to 2017. The heteroscedasticity robust regression error specification test (RESET) confirms the relevance of PPML over the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) estimator. Results showed that China–Australia, Korea–Australia, Australia–USA and Japan–Australia have larger trade creation effects in the agricultural sector. At the commodity level, variation in trade creation effects is estimated from the different trade agreements. Among the selected commodities, the larger effects were generated in trade in sugar and wine by the implementation of the majority of the trade agreements. Overall, the trade creation was greater than the export diversion of the FTAs. The findings of the study have implications for Australia’s future trade agreements.