North–South terms‐of‐trade trends from 1960 to 2006

The composition of exports of developing countries is increasingly dominated by manufactured goods. This has not changed the fact that their major trading partners continue to be the developed countries. In order to properly assess the distribution of gains from trade, there is a pressing need to analyze the movements in the terms of trade of developing countries with respect to the developed ones. A statistical analysis of the North–South terms of trade reveals that the terms of trade have turned against the South since the 1960s. However, the terms‐of‐trade deterioration is neither continuous nor evenly distributed over different country groupings. The existence of a structural break in the mid‐to‐late 1970s together with the greatest adverse terms‐of‐trade movements against the highly indebted and least developed countries attest the discontinuity and unevenness of this process.     

ROBUST ASSET ALLOCATION WITH BENCHMARKED OBJECTIVES

In this paper, we introduce a new approach for finding robust portfolios when there is model uncertainty. It differs from the usual worst‐case approach in that a (dynamic) portfolio is evaluated not only by its performance when there is an adversarial opponent (“nature”), but also by its performance relative to a stochastic benchmark. The benchmark corresponds to the wealth of a fictitious benchmark investor who invests optimally given knowledge of the model chosen by nature, so in this regard, our objective has the flavor of min–max regret. This relative performance approach has several important properties: (i) optimal portfolios seek to perform well over the entire range of models and not just the worst case, and hence are less pessimistic than those obtained from the usual worst‐case approach; (ii) the dynamic problem reduces to a convex static optimization problem under reasonable choices of the benchmark portfolio for important classes of models including ambiguous jump‐diffusions; and (iii) this static problem is dual to a Bayesian version of a single period asset allocation problem where the prior on the unknown parameters (for the dual problem) correspond to the Lagrange multipliers in this duality relationship. This dual static problem can be interpreted as a less pessimistic alternative to the single period worst‐case Markowitz problem. More generally, this duality suggests that learning and robustness are closely related when benchmarked objectives are used.     

New Insights on US Aggregate and State Level Trade with the China Region

Aggregate trade data with breakdown into related and non‐related party components show that US multinational enterprises use different trading strategies in the China region relative to other countries. US trade with the China region in 2002–2007 is characterized by arm's‐length transactions. State‐level trade data show great variability in state engagement with the region through trade: exports to the region range from 1 to 28 percent of state exports. In addition, compared to exports to other countries, exports to the region are highly concentrated. At the extreme, for some states, 96–98 percent of exports to the region are computer and electronic products. Finally, gravity regressions show that state exports to Hong Kong are positively associated with the relative size of the Hong Kong‐born population in the states. There is no evidence that stricter labor regimes lead to lower state exports.     

浅谈国际物流对国际贸易的影响

世界经济逐渐复苏,后金融危机时期国际贸易止跌回稳,国际物流也摆脱低迷状态,重拾增势。本文着重分析国际物流对国际贸易的影响,进而提出相应的对策建议,以期对我国国际物流业的发展有所帮助。     

浅析海南经济国际化发展

为了推进海南自由贸易区战略,随着海南国际旅游岛的提出,国家给予了海南国际化发展更多的政策优惠与支持。本文首先描述了海南经济国际化发展的现状,并分析了海南发展经济国际化的优势以及存在的主要问题,最后提出了加快发展海南经济国际化的对策。     

进一步完善服务贸易统计体系研究——以浙江省宁波市为例

完善服务贸易统计体系,做好国际服务贸易统计工作,为服务贸易的发展提供咨询、监督、预警和指导,是大力发展服务贸易所必须解决的一项基础性课题。由于服务贸易统计体系涉及部门较多,情况分散复杂,在推动和发展服务贸易的过程中尚未形成一个整体协调的有效工作体制,建立并完善宁波市服务贸易统计体系的步伐比较缓慢。文章认为,完善宁波服务贸易统计体系必须改善国际收支申报的细节工作,优化服务贸易申报过程;改进统计方法——大力提倡抽样调查法收集统计数据;确立有效的服务贸易统计主体;加快宁波服务贸易统计的制度化、信息化和科学化建设。     

IT MAY BE OUR CURRENCY,BUT IT'S YOUR PROBLEM

The dollar's dominance of international transactions and role as a reserve currency is an exorbitant privilege that is a burden as well as a blessing for the US. It achieved this dominance early in the twentieth century, quite quickly in fact; it may also see that status change equally quickly were the world to move to a multipolar system of currencies. Among the most likely candidates for reserve currencies in such a world are the dollar, the euro, and the Chinese renminbi, Barry Eichengreen explained in his Butlin Lecture earlier in 2011.     

我国服务贸易现状、问题及其进一步发展的政策措施

本文以1989-2008年我国GDP、服务贸易进出口额与总额、各部门服务贸易进出口额的数据为样本,以我国服务贸易发展历程为鉴,从我国服务贸易进出口结构和贸易开放度等角度分析探讨了我国服务贸易进出口的现状以及存在的问题,提出一系列提高我国服务贸易竞争力最终提高其对我国经济增长贡献度的针对性政策措施和建议。     

湖南农产品加工贸易的现状及发展对策

发展农产品加工贸易,是提高农业综合效益和农民收入的重要途径。湖南农产品加工贸易产值占湖南加工贸易总额的30%,已成为湖南经济发展新的增长点。本文分析了湖南农产品加工贸易的发展现状及存在的问题,提出了促进农产品加工贸易快速健康发展的策略。     

Traders' Bidding Strategies on European Grain Export Refunds: An Analysis with Affiliated Signals

Using a multivariate distribution of traders' information with correlations, we specify the traders' bidding strategies on tenders of European soft wheat intervention stocks. We show that correlations may have opposing effects on the traders' bidding strategy, depending on their valuation of the grain. This structural approach allows us to estimate the traders' strategies using generalized method of moments procedures.