Essays on Trade, Productivity, and Specialization PDF Download

Author: Pablo Enrique Fleiss Weinberger
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 113

View

Book Description

Author: Kenan Bagci
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 228

View

Book Description
The thesis consists of three empirical essays on trade, specialization and development. The first chapter studies the impact of greater economic integration (namely monetary unions) on trade, specialization and location of firms. Cost reductions due to greater economic integration may have substantial impact on the firms and industries of the countries involved. When analyzing the relationship between trade and monetary union, existing studies concentrate mainly on the volume effects of monetary unions and ignore the potential restructuring in trade and production within and between the member countries. The first chapter takes the case of the Eurozone and tests several predictions identified on the behavior of firms and industries. In this framework, it studies the export behavior of small and medium sized enterprises, adjustments in specialization and concentration of export, and location of differentiated and high-tech industries. In all cases, it provides important empirical evidences and thus contributes to the literature.The next chapter focuses on a relatively rarely studied topic and investigates the association between crisis and trade. There are papers analyzing the impact of trade on crisis and few others studying the impact of crisis on the level of trade. Post-crisis developments, on the other hand, did not attract much attention and no persuasive link has yet been established on the effects of crises on trade. By placing particular emphasis on the nature of crises, this second essay attempts to fill this gap in the literature by providing the first evidence on the potential impacts of crises on trade structure. Welfare impacts of trade and trade liberalization is well documented in the literature. Recent empirical works highlight the importance of trade structure in economic development as well. The channels through which trade structure may improve economic performance are, however, widely ignored. Productivity growth is one of the salient channels contributing to better economic performance. Finally the last chapter scrutinizes the role of export diversification as a cost discovery process on productivity growth. There is again no study conducted in investigating the relationship between export diversification and productivity growth and by providing early evidence and thus contributes to the literature. Trade; specialization; monetary union; economic crises; export diversification; productivity growth

Author: Arnold Kling
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 1944424164
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 223

View

Book Description
Since the end of the second World War, economics professors and classroom textbooks have been telling us that the economy is one big machine that can be effectively regulated by economic experts and tuned by government agencies like the Federal Reserve Board. It turns out they were wrong. Their equations do not hold up. Their policies have not produced the promised results. Their interpretations of economic events -- as reported by the media -- are often of-the-mark, and unconvincing. A key alternative to the one big machine mindset is to recognize how the economy is instead an evolutionary system, with constantly-changing patterns of specialization and trade. This book introduces you to this powerful approach for understanding economic performance. By putting specialization at the center of economic analysis, Arnold Kling provides you with new ways to think about issues like sustainability, financial instability, job creation, and inflation. In short, he removes stiff, narrow perspectives and instead provides a full, multi-dimensional perspective on a continually evolving system.

Author: Jennifer Yan Yin Leung
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 86

View

Book Description
The focus of the first essay is on, examining the effect of free trade agreements on the growth of bilateral vertical specialization in manufacturing between the U.S. and its trading partners, before and after the agreements were signed. Bilateral production sharing is modeled using input-output analysis. The goal to broaden market access through the elimination of tariffs on most of the manufactured goods between free trade agreements countries has produced mixed results, at least, in the manufacturing sector. Since the various free trade agreements involving the U.S. have taken effect, tariff reductions on manufactured goods have not been uniform in bringing a substantial increase in total bilateral vertical specialization levels with countries in Central and Southern America, Africa, and the Middle East. North American countries are by far the most significant trade partner with the U.S. Asian and Oceanic countries have increasing levels of bilateral vertical specialization with the U.S. Despite growing over time, bilateral vertical specialization levels are relatively small for most of the Central/South American countries, as well for countries in Africa and the Middle East.

Author: Anders Åkerman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789171557247
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 106

View

Book Description

Author: Yelena Sheveleva
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

View

Book Description
This dissertation consists of three essays spanning the fields of international trade and economic development. In the first essay, we ask why developing countries fail to specialize in products in which they (at least potentially) have a comparative advantage? For example, farmers in land-poor developing countries overwhelmingly produce staples rather than exotic fruits that command high prices. We propose a simple model of trade and intermediation that shows how holdup resulting from poor contracting environment can produce such an outcome. We use the model to examine which polices can help ameliorate the problem, even when its cause cannot be eliminated.In the second and the third essays, we study how exporters introduce new products into the export market. In the second essay, using information on the universe of Chinese exporters to the US, we document a number of empirircal facts that discipline economists' undrstanding of dynamic aspects of multiproduct exporters. In the third essay, we estimate a structural dynamic model of multiproduct exporting.In Chapter 1, "Wheat or Strawberries? Intermediated Trade with Limited Contracting," we develop the model that provides a new explanation as to why developing countries have agricultural productivity orders of magnitude smaller than in the developing countries. We propose that due to contracting frictions agricultural producers often specialize in staples in which they have a comparative disadvantage, instead of specializing in fruits and vegetables which they can grow efficiently and which command higher prices in the export markets. While farmers can subsits on staples, farmers require services of the intermediaries to deliver cash crops to the export market. When markets are thin intermediaries hold the bulk of the bargaining power and offer a small price to the farmer for his produce. Foreseeing the hold up farmers choose to specialize in the staples.In the model, farmers can produce two types of goods: wheat and strawberries. Wheat is suitable for subsistence but farmers are inefficient in producing it. Farmers are efficient in making strawberries, but cannot subsist on it, and have to sell them to an intermediary who makes profits by selling it at the world price. In a frictionless world farmers would specialize in strawberries. Central to the model is the inability of farmers and traders to contract ex-ante on a price. The absence of enforceable contracts sets the stage for the classic hold up problem and precludes negotiating the terms of trade prior to entry into production. We use a two period model with a continuum of traders and farmers. In the first period, farmers decide whether to produce wheat or strawberries and intermediaries decide whether to enter the business of intermediation. In the second period, farmers and traders meet randomly and trade. Since meetings are random and traders do not know the number of local competitors but do know how thick the market is, they can infer the distribution of potential rivals and offer a price based on this information. In other words, traders compete for the output of farmers in the first price auction. As a result, some farmers fetch a high price for their strawberries; others fetch a low price, or even fail to meet an intermediary. Farmers make the production decision based on the expected price.We solve the model and characterize all the possible equilibria as a function of the primitive parameters. Of particular interest is the region in the parameter space that yields multiple equilibria. In the good equilibrium, specialization occurs according to comparative advantage and there is intermediation, while in the bad equilibrium, there is no intermediation and the staple is produced. Our work suggests that there may be some simple measures to ensure intermediation and specialization according to comparative advantage even if the government is not able to resolve the core issue, the underlying lack of enforceable contracts. A temporary production subsidy or a marketing board that ensures a sufficiently high minimum price to the farmer can help an economy remove the bad equilibrium without intermediation. This paper is closely related to the work of Antras and Costinot (2011). In their paper they focus on the implications of intermediation for globalization in a model that assumes that contracts between traders and producers are enforceable. In contrast we study the implications of contractual failure on production choices in a model of trade with intermediation. In Chapter 2, "Multiproduct Exporters: Empirical Regularities," we use information on Chinese exporters to the US to document a number of empirical regularities regarding dynamic multiproduct exporter behaviour. First, we confirm that scope and firm scale are positively associated. This suggests that more productive firms select to produce more products. Furthermore we find empirical regularities that are consistent with firms facing uncertainty in the export market. We explore the conjecture that firms learn about their potential in new export products trough exporting similar products. We find only tentative support for this conjecture.In chapter 3, "Multiproduct Exporters: Learning versus Knowing," we develop and estimate a structural model of multiproduct exporters based on three empirical regularities documented using data on Chinese exporters. These regularities are as follows: (1) multi-product exporters introduce their best-selling products early; (2) more than 40% of the new products introduced by incumbent exporters are dropped due to low sales within the first year; (3) for a firm, the probability of introducing a new product is positively related to the survival and success of the earlier products.The first regularity is consistent with unobserved firm-product specific heterogeneity. The second suggests that both incumbents and new exporters face uncertainty when they introduce new products. The third is consistent with firms learning about their potential in an export market, i.e., their brand effect, as they introduce new products. We develop a model which incorporates all of these features, and we estimate it structurally using data on Chinese exporters to the U.S. in the plastics industry.First, we find that known demand shocks play an important role in whether producers enter the exporting market or not. Second, we find that it is important to account for large attrition among new exporters including uncertainty about the brand effect. When we let firms know their brand effect precisely, only those with sufficiently high brand effects enter, and then the model cannot replicate disproportionately large attrition of new products among new exporters. Third, we find that while firms act consistently with learning about their brand effect, the uncertainty that firms face in conjunction with introducing new products looms large, and limits the extent to which learning affects incentives of firms to add new products. Our counterfactuals show that the distribution of products among the high brand effect firms only marginally first order stochastically dominates the distribution for low brand effect firms.Using our model we revisit the question of trade policy in the multiproduct firm setting. We simulate a decrease in the cost of introducing new products for firms. Our simulations suggest that in the presence of economies of scope and even moderate learning effects, decreasing costs of introducing subsequent products can make a significant contribution to increasing trade flows.

Author: Siwook Lee
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 258

View

Book Description

Author: Murray C. Kemp
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134792026
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 417

View

Book Description
This book focuses on the normative side of trade theory and is divided into five parts: * trade under perfect competition; * restricted trade under perfect competition; * trade under imperfect competition and other distortions; * Compensation: lumpsum, non-lumpsum or neither? * International trade

Author: Amitabh Singh
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 124

View

Book Description

Author: Minho Kim
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic dissertations
Languages : en
Pages : 107

View

Book Description
In each of the three essays, I investigate gains from trade originating at three sources: i) vertical specialization through intermediate goods trade, ii) improving allocation of resources across heterogeneous firms, and iii) developing countries' technological advancement towards particular factors of production, either skilled labor or unskilled labor. I develop three models of trade, featuring multi-stage production, micro-distortions with endogenous entry and exit, and directed technical change. First, I show quantitatively that trade barriers play an important role in hindering the integration of poor countries in global market through trade in intermediate goods. Second, I find that the substantial impact of trade is to improve allocation on the extensive margin by forcing out less productive firms and replacing those with more productive firms. Third, I prove that gains from trade are magnified due to endogenously directed technical change. In the first chapter, I investigate whether the gains from trade are systematically related to the level of development. This chapter argues that we need to consider a multi-stage production process to answer the questions. I develop a Ricardian trade model which features two stages of production. At each stage, gains from trade can be measured by the home trade share, a measure of market integration. Looking at each stage's home trade shares across countries, I find different specialization patterns: rich countries are integrated at each stage whereas most poor countries are not integrated. Measured gains from trade are more than ten times larger for the 10 richest countries than for the 10 poorest countries. For the rich countries, two-thirds of the gains are accounted for by second stage trade. Poor countries' small gains from trade are accounted entirely by first stage trade. I argue that difference in trade barriers between rich countries and poor countries, particularly in the second stage of production, limit trade gains for poor countries. Second chapter studies the impact of international trade on sectoral total factor productivity (TFP). Misallocation of resources across heterogeneous firms impacts negatively on TFP. In this chapter, I study trade liberalization as a source of reducing misallocation across firms, thus leading to higher TFP. Misallocation is reduced on the extensive margin by forcing out less productive firms and replacing those with more productive firms. Using firm-level panel data on Chinese manufacturing, I measure distortions across firms and over time as in Hsieh and Klenow (2009). I find that the allocation of factors improves more in industries that experience a higher reduction in tariff rates. Less productive firms are more likely to exit in sectors that experience a higher tariff reduction. In addition, entrants in more liberalized sectors are more productive relative to entrants in less liberalized sectors. Reducing misallocation on the extensive margin has quantitatively large effect on TFP. In the third chapter, I analyze how technical change is directed towards particular factors of production in international trade between the North and the South. Typical assumption in the literature is that either technologies are exogenously given or technical change is allowed only in the North. I present a model of international trade with endogenous growth by allowing the South to direct their technology. This chapter studies the implications of the technical change for the gains from trade and the skill premium. Main result shows that more R & D is directed towards skill-augmenting technology in the North than in the South in sectors with the same skill-intensity. Technical change induced by lowering trade costs can increase the skill premium in both the North and the South. Gains from trade are magnified due to endogenous directed technical change. This results in larger gains from trade compared with the model where technical change is either not allowed or allowed only in the North.