Review of World Economics最新文献

It is notoriously difficult to estimate the impact of information frictions on trade. The 1866 transatlantic telegraph connection has been used to estimate these impacts, but I demonstrate this sample violates the assumptions of an arbitrage model in ways that are likely to bias empirical result. I avoid this bias by constructing a novel dataset that meets all relevant assumptions during the 1848 rollout of the telegraph across the U.S., ultimately estimating the magnitude of the distortions on prices, quantities, and efficiency to be roughly half as large as those found in prior literature.

The empirical evidence on the relationship between the real exchange rate and export performance in emerging economies is inconclusive. In this paper, we present evidence that one reason for this inconclusiveness is the use of real exchange rate (RER) measures that do not consider the heterogeneity between economic sectors. To this end, we calculate a unique sectoral bilateral RER index (SBRER) for 12 Latin American economies, which considers the variation of producer price differentials and bilateral nominal exchange rates across 21 manufacturing sectors and 38 trade partners between 2001–2018, and to estimate the effect of SBRER movements on manufacturing exports. The regression results show that the SBRER is a significant determinant of aggregate manufacturing exports, whereas the bilateral RER is not significant. Moreover, sectoral export elasticities indicate that mainly sectors with low levels of product complexity and, to a lesser extent, those of medium complexity are affected by RER movements. These findings show that it is important to consider sectoral heterogeneity when estimating RER export elasticities from a macroeconomic perspective.

We consider the role played by trade in differentiated inputs in the country-pair decision to form a PTA in goods and in their decision to expand it to trade in services with varying degrees of coverage, which transforms a preferential agreement into an Economic Integration Area (EIA). Our baseline model is very successful in predicting the formation of preferential agreements. Our model correctly predicts 84 percent of the country pairs with PTAs in our dataset and can successfully predict the 83 percent of the country pairs that do not form a PTA. Moreover, our model predicts 78 percent of the observations involving country pairs belonging to an EIA when a PTA exists.

Global Value Chains (GVCs) are a feature of the organization of production in many sectors and countries and they deeply affect international trade patterns. How far the separation of production stages—generating increasingly widespread GVCs—can go, is currently a matter of debate. The main focus of this paper is to investigate GVCs at the country-industry level by modelling them through the construction of a specific network and using network analysis tools. In particular, the aim is to propose a network-based measure of GVCs length to assess whether the structure of GVCs has stretched or shrank over time. Analyzing the evolution of these structures is important to better understand the role played by countries in the production chain, with implications also for their fragility or resilience in presence of external shocks. Our measure allows to consider differently shaped GVCs, and the results show that there are relevant differences among sectors and countries in terms of the evolution of GVCs, especially considering direct or indirect links. Overall, we find a general stability over time of GVCs, confirming the importance of the “relational approach” in GVCs. But the shifts in the geographical patterns of the connections also support the view that firms organizing this complex form of production are ready to grasp better opportunities when they appear in the global markets.

This research examines the global implications of agricultural production and price fluctuations via Global Bayesian Vector Autoregression (GBVAR) model. We develop a novel Paasche agriculture price index, based on the relative time-varying contribution of four dominant food commodities shifting contributions of major food commodities (rice, maize, soybeans, wheat), pivotal for global sustenance. The analysis reveals that while agricultural production shocks are important, they exert a comparatively lesser impact than agriculture price shocks. Higher agriculture inflation can be destabilizing via lower output and higher aggregate inflation.

We quantify the effects of GATT/WTO membership on trade and welfare. Using an extensive database covering manufacturing trade for 186 countries over the period 1980–2016, we find that the average partial equilibrium impact of GATT/WTO membership on trade among member countries is large, positive, and significant. We contribute to the literature by estimating country-specific estimates and find them to vary widely across the countries in our sample with poorer members benefitting more. Using these estimates, we simulate the general equilibrium effects of GATT/WTO on welfare, which are sizable and heterogeneous across members. We show that countries not experiencing positive trade effects from joining GATT/WTO can still gain in terms of welfare, due to lower import prices and higher export demand.

The Comprehensive Monetary Policy Framework (CMPF) project, which considers de jure and de facto, domestic (money, inflation) and external (exchange rate), monetary policy targets, has now classified 186 countries/currency areas from 1974 to 2017. This means that it is now possible to track the evolution of monetary policy frameworks across the world and its regions. This paper outlines the methodology of the classification and analyses the trends at global, regional and sub-regional levels.