International Economics最新文献

We build a financial resilience index capturing the structure and stability features of financial systems and benchmark EU financial systems against their ability to enhance stable growth and international risk sharing. The index comprises financial openness, market orientation, equity deepening, maturity structure, and institutional soundness. Our results show that: (i) EU financial systems are highly heterogeneous and converge to a clustered pattern; (ii) the index is highly significant in growth regressions, suggesting that financial structure and institutional soundness are key to enduring growth; (iii) the heterogeneity of EU financial systems has implications for the vulnerability to domestic output shocks: the risk-sharing mechanism is more effective in the market-based and institutionally sound economies that group in the top financial clusters, whereas unsmoothed consumption is higher in economies belonging to the low-resilience clusters, especially in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, when the credit channel is significantly downsized.

We study the effect of the bilateral trade integration with China on wage inequality in Brazil. Previous studies have documented the contribution of trade opening to the decline in inequality since the 1990s, driven primarily by cross-firm pay differences. We find a sharper reduction in wage inequality over the 2000s, parallel to China’s accession to the WTO. Our analysis of the China shock suggests that some firms are harmed by import competition, especially those in the High-Tech Manufacturing sector, while others profit from increased exports and cheaper inputs. We rationalize these patterns by extending the theoretical framework of Helpman et al. (2017) to include sector heterogeneity in trade exposure and firm-level selection into imports. Our model indicates that the rise of China led to a reduction in cross-firm wage inequality in Brazil by about 5%.

French and European farmers vigorously protest in early 2024 against perceived poor economic conditions, increased paperwork burden as well as stringent environmental constraints. The initial policy responses by both national and EU authorities failed to completely calm them, leading the French president Emmanuel Macron to surprisingly propose minimum farm prices. This paper develops an original computable general equilibrium model framework to assess two policy options to reach these minimum prices for livestock industries. The first relies on trade policy instruments and the second on a new competition policy with price discrimination and motivated by the Egalim laws. We find that the first option is unlikely to support French and European farm and food incomes, particularly if third countries reply with similar trade instruments. By contrast, the price discrimination option can support farm incomes, but partly at the expense of the domestic consumption of livestock products.

Using a large panel of European firms covering the years 2007–2015, this study investigates the effects of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) on performance. Controlling for self-selection through propensity score matching techniques at baseline in a two-way fixed effect difference-in-differences framework, we determine that OFDI firms exhibit higher productivity, value-added, sales, and profit compared with non-OFDI firms. Heterogeneity analysis by destination reveals that the highest performance premia accrue to firms that invested in non-European Union (EU) countries, developed economies and technology-advanced hosts. Heterogeneity analysis by ownership structure shows that OFDI established via joint-venture or wholly owned enterprises have similar, positive performance premia. Furthermore, investing abroad entails no reduction in the parent companies’ number of employees. Finally, we document an increase in research and development expenditure for OFDI firms at both intensive and extensive margins, indicating a potential driver of the observed performance premia.