Coffee exports and industrialization in Brazil

We investigate the dynamic relationship between coffee exports and machinery imports in Brazil from 1869 to 1939. Our tests reveal cointegration and bidirectional causality in the temporal sense. This evidence suggests that foreign exchange real revenues from coffee exports were important for the onset of industrialization, as machinery imports proxy for real investment demand. Capital growth, in turn, also helped to boost the country’s exports.     

Public export credit insurance in the Netherlands: An input–output approach

This study assesses the contribution of the Dutch public export credit insurance facility (ECIF) to Dutch GDP and employment. Unlike previous studies concerning export credit insurance, which generally adopt the gravity model of trade, we adopt an input–output approach. The results show that the contribution of economic activity insured by the public ECIF to GDP averages 0.24% annually. This concerns value added generated both by exporters and by their domestic suppliers in the value chain. The contribution to employment shows an average of 0.27%, accumulating to 95,000 jobs (FTE) over 5 years. The estimated contribution of the public ECIF to the Dutch economy should be considered an upper boundary of its true contribution. Therefore, we examine the extent to which the above economic gains would be realised if the facility was unavailable using highly disaggregated trade data. The basic idea is that if certain products are only exported to certain destinations with the aid of the public ECIF, then this indicates a high degree of additionality. The inconclusiveness of our results underlines the difficulties in assessing the degree of additionality.     

Determinants of Exports in China’s Meat Industry: A Gravity Model Analysis

ABSTRACT

What are the major determinants of China’s meat exports flows? In addressing this question, we propose a commodity-specific gravity model. This study has employed a unique dataset of 20 years (1997–2016) for China’s pork exports flows to its 31 regular trading partners to estimate the commodity-specific gravity model. The PPML and Heckman selection models are simultaneously estimated to confirm the robustness of the findings. The results reveal that GDP, exchange rate, common language, and country land area are the significant factors affecting the Chinese pork exports flows. Moreover, China’s WTO membership, the ‘Belt & Road’ Initiative, and the common borders have a positive significant impact on its exports of pork.     

The price of sanctions: An empirical analysis of German export losses due to the Russian agricultural ban

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the vivid political discussion on the consequences of the Russian agricultural import ban on the German export market by quantifying export losses that German agri-food exporters encountered on the Russian market due to the agricultural import ban of 2014. A gravity-type approach is used to measure the sanction effect in a panel of German agri-food exports covering the period from January 1999 to June 2018. The ban effect is disentangled from a sequence of different geopolitically- and economically driven episodes. Once macroeconomic developments of the Russian economy as well as individual stages of decreasing trade cooperation in the preban period are accounted for, the import ban reduced German agri-food exports significantly but was not the major cause. Therefore, a simple elimination of the ban will not be enough to restore trade to the presanctions level.     

The Impact of Environmental Regulation on Productivity and Exports: A Firm-Level Evidence from China

Abstract

This paper investigates the influence of environmental regulation on firm performance, as captured by firm productivity and firm exports. We first construct a Melitz-style model investigating the causal effects of environmental regulation on firm productivity and firm exports, and then test the theoretical predictions using firm-level data over the period 2005–2009. The theoretical and empirical investigation suggests that environmental regulation promotes firm productivity slightly with a lagged effect, has a harmful impact on firm exports, and has a U-shaped relationship with firm exports. China is to the far left of the inflection point, but this U-shaped relationship is not present at firms in clean industries and clean regions.     

The great trade collapse and Indian firms

The collapse in global trade during the 2008–09 crisis has been widely studied using the developed nation(s) data. I use firm‐level data from Indian manufacturers to show that: (a) Indian firms experience strong negative demand shocks concerning their exports to the USA and the EU, the effect being significantly higher in case of the USA. Results assert that 1% increase in the exposure towards the crisis‐affected zones (the USA and the EU combined) reduces an average Indian manufacturing firm's export earnings by 1.17%–1.36%; (b) trade in consumer non‐durables and durables are the two most affected sectors, impact being higher for the latter; (c) evidence in support of similar effects throughout the size distribution of firms, with the effect being highest for small or the most vulnerable firms; (d) drop in demand, as a result of the 2008–09 crisis, only affects the high‐exposure industries. My results are robust to IV analysis and a variety of checks.     

The impact of the yuan‐dollar exchange rate on Mexican manufacturing exports to the US: A cointegration approach

This paper makes use of three econometric methods and three time intervals to evaluate the long‐term effects of several key variables on Mexican manufacturing exports to the US . The evidence across econometric techniques and sample periods systematically indicates that: (i) a real depreciation of the yuan‐dollar exchange rate reduces Mexican manufacturing exports by lowering the price of Chinese goods in the US market; (ii) a depreciation of the peso‐dollar real exchange rate generates a strong supply‐side effect due to the high import content of Mexican manufacturing exports, which ultimately leads to lower (rather than higher) sales in the US ; and (iii) external demand and labour productivity are positively related to manufacturing exports, whereas real wages are negatively related. Therefore, a falling external demand for Mexican manufacturing products or a real depreciation of the Chinese currency could, to some extent, be offset by increasing labour productivity faster than wages. These findings reflect two fundamental problems of the Mexican economy: (i) low investment in high‐quality formal instruction and proper training programs, which gives rise to severe bottleneck points for faster labour productivity growth and (ii) excessive reliance of the export‐oriented manufacturing industry on foreign suppliers of intermediate inputs.     

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.     

Is competition from China so special?

Competition from China is perceived as particularly damaging. We study whether this is true for firm performance. Using the universe of Spanish export transactions, we find that an increase in competition from China does not have a more damaging effect on export revenues, prices and number of exported products than an equally sized increase in competition from other countries. We document, though, that Chinese competition raises the probability that a firm ceases to export a good to a destination more than competition from other countries. This effect declines over time. We document an omitted variable bias in studies focusing only on Chinese competition, even when controlling for unobserved heterogeneity of destinations for different products within firms.     

Institutions,innovation and growth

This paper looks at the link between the quality of economic institutions and innovation, and innovation and growth. We construct a measure of the innovation content of individual manufacturing industries and show that countries with stronger economic institutions specialize in more innovation‐intensive industries. Our results also provide evidence that industries involving higher levels of innovation grow relatively faster in countries with better economic institutions. The results suggest that innovation is an important channel through which higher quality economic institutions contribute to better growth performance in the long run.