Eddy Bekkers, Joseph F. Francois, Douglas R. Nelson, Hugo Rojas‐Romagosa
Recent theoretical and quantitative analysis of trade wars is grounded in a relatively narrow treatment of optimal tariff theory and noncooperative Nash equilibria. The lynchpin of this approach is the assumption that trade policy makers are rational and have a simple well‐established objective function to optimize. We argue that the preferred specification of this objective function ignores inequality at its peril. We work with a quantitative trade model, introducing a comprehensive tariff‐space grid search new to the literature. This allows us to explicitly check for the presence of multiple Nash outcomes. We show that including income inequality—a primary focus of the earlier literature—as a determinant of social welfare can substantially change noncooperative Nash outcomes. We also show that the optimal tariff of the US falls by half when the social welfare function includes inequality as an objective. Hence, the economic outcomes of actual trade wars may be very different from what recent estimates grounded in optimal tariff theory would suggest.
{"title":"Trade wars and trade disputes: The role of equity and political support","authors":"Eddy Bekkers, Joseph F. Francois, Douglas R. Nelson, Hugo Rojas‐Romagosa","doi":"10.1111/roie.12742","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/roie.12742","url":null,"abstract":"Recent theoretical and quantitative analysis of trade wars is grounded in a relatively narrow treatment of optimal tariff theory and noncooperative Nash equilibria. The lynchpin of this approach is the assumption that trade policy makers are rational and have a simple well‐established objective function to optimize. We argue that the preferred specification of this objective function ignores inequality at its peril. We work with a quantitative trade model, introducing a comprehensive tariff‐space grid search new to the literature. This allows us to explicitly check for the presence of multiple Nash outcomes. We show that including income inequality—a primary focus of the earlier literature—as a determinant of social welfare can substantially change noncooperative Nash outcomes. We also show that the optimal tariff of the US falls by half when the social welfare function includes inequality as an objective. Hence, the economic outcomes of actual trade wars may be very different from what recent estimates grounded in optimal tariff theory would suggest.","PeriodicalId":47712,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Economics","volume":"294 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140584627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The easily forgivable federal loans offered through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) to offset the impact of the COVID‐19 recession provide a unique opportunity to investigate whether subsidizing the costs of labor for small firms can increase exports in the whole industry. The main eligibility rule to receive these loans, i.e., having less than 500 employees in 2019 and the size of loans, were dependent on the size of the firm prior to the COVID‐19 pandemic. This implies a plausibly exogenous variation in the size of the PPP loans across states and industries. We exploit this exogenous variation in the size of PPP loans and estimate a difference‐in‐differences model that allows for heterogenous treatment effect to measure the instantaneous and dynamic effects of these loans. We find that a 10% increase in the size of PPP loans in 2020 and 2021 leads to 0.27% and 0.37% increase in exports in a given state‐industry. The 2020 loans appear to have no lasting effect beyond the quarter they are awarded. The 2021 loans, however, displayed a more dynamic effect and a 10% increase in the size of these loans in one quarter would lead to 0.28% increase in the value of exports three quarters later. In addition to estimating the average effect of these loans, we show that the effects of the loans are significantly heterogeneous across industries and the per‐dollar effect of these loans decreases as the loan size (per employee) increases.
{"title":"Subsidized wages, small businesses, and exports: Evidence from the paycheck protection program","authors":"Ali Enami, Sucharita Ghosh","doi":"10.1111/roie.12748","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/roie.12748","url":null,"abstract":"The easily forgivable federal loans offered through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) to offset the impact of the COVID‐19 recession provide a unique opportunity to investigate whether subsidizing the costs of labor for small firms can increase exports in the whole industry. The main eligibility rule to receive these loans, i.e., having less than 500 employees in 2019 and the size of loans, were dependent on the size of the firm prior to the COVID‐19 pandemic. This implies a plausibly exogenous variation in the size of the PPP loans across states and industries. We exploit this exogenous variation in the size of PPP loans and estimate a difference‐in‐differences model that allows for heterogenous treatment effect to measure the instantaneous and dynamic effects of these loans. We find that a 10% increase in the size of PPP loans in 2020 and 2021 leads to 0.27% and 0.37% increase in exports in a given state‐industry. The 2020 loans appear to have no lasting effect beyond the quarter they are awarded. The 2021 loans, however, displayed a more dynamic effect and a 10% increase in the size of these loans in one quarter would lead to 0.28% increase in the value of exports three quarters later. In addition to estimating the average effect of these loans, we show that the effects of the loans are significantly heterogeneous across industries and the per‐dollar effect of these loans decreases as the loan size (per employee) increases.","PeriodicalId":47712,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Economics","volume":"88 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140585141","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kimball preferences possess properties that make them a powerful tool for multi‐sector applied general equilibrium. While they are homothetic, they also can be made arbitrarily close to constant elasticity of substitution (ces) preferences, thereby sharing some of their properties ‘by continuity’. We develop a trade model which brings together traded and nontraded sectors, variable markups, and costly trade for this rich class of homothetic preferences. We characterize the consequences—for both sectors—of trade liberalization in traded sector. Numerical simulations for a calibrated version of the model reveal that the elasticity of utility with respect to trade costs is about 25%–27%, depending on whether traded and nontrade goods are complements or substitutes.
{"title":"ε$$ varepsilon $$‐ces preferences and trade","authors":"Kristian Behrens, Sergei Kichko, Philip Ushchev","doi":"10.1111/roie.12749","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/roie.12749","url":null,"abstract":"Kimball preferences possess properties that make them a powerful tool for multi‐sector applied general equilibrium. While they are homothetic, they also can be made arbitrarily close to constant elasticity of substitution (<jats:sc>ces</jats:sc>) preferences, thereby sharing some of their properties ‘by continuity’. We develop a trade model which brings together traded and nontraded sectors, variable markups, and costly trade for this rich class of homothetic preferences. We characterize the consequences—for both sectors—of trade liberalization in traded sector. Numerical simulations for a calibrated version of the model reveal that the elasticity of utility with respect to trade costs is about 25%–27%, depending on whether traded and nontrade goods are complements or substitutes.","PeriodicalId":47712,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Economics","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140202951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper studies the role of trade for the joint uptake of AI-enabled automation in manufacturing and engineering. It develops an agent-based model (ABM) where the agents are heterogeneous manufacturers and engineering firms. The ABM features two technology-related business models: engineering as a face-to-face consultancy service and engineering as automated software. The software adoption rate follows an S-shaped curve for manufacturers and a boom and bust cycle for engineers. In the early phase, shortage of engineers constrains AI uptake, while engineers become abundant when AI is fully adopted. Trade affects the cut-off productivity level at which manufacturers switch technology, the shape of the adoption rate curve, and the incentives for engineers to develop software. Bulky transactions and different productivity distributions across countries are drivers of trade in their own right.
本文研究了贸易对制造业和工程业共同采用人工智能自动化的作用。它建立了一个基于代理的模型(ABM),其中的代理是异质制造商和工程公司。该模型有两种与技术相关的商业模式:工程是一种面对面的咨询服务,工程是一种自动化软件。制造商的软件采用率呈 S 型曲线,而工程师的软件采用率则呈繁荣与萧条循环。在早期阶段,工程师的短缺制约了人工智能的采用,而当人工智能被全面采用时,工程师就会变得非常充裕。贸易会影响制造商转换技术的生产率临界水平、采用率曲线的形状以及工程师开发软件的积极性。大宗交易和各国不同的生产力分布本身就是贸易的驱动力。
{"title":"Double whammy? Trade and automation in engineering services","authors":"Franziska Klügl, Hildegunn Kyvik Nordås","doi":"10.1111/roie.12743","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/roie.12743","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies the role of trade for the joint uptake of AI-enabled automation in manufacturing and engineering. It develops an agent-based model (ABM) where the agents are heterogeneous manufacturers and engineering firms. The ABM features two technology-related business models: engineering as a face-to-face consultancy service and engineering as automated software. The software adoption rate follows an S-shaped curve for manufacturers and a boom and bust cycle for engineers. In the early phase, shortage of engineers constrains AI uptake, while engineers become abundant when AI is fully adopted. Trade affects the cut-off productivity level at which manufacturers switch technology, the shape of the adoption rate curve, and the incentives for engineers to develop software. Bulky transactions and different productivity distributions across countries are drivers of trade in their own right.","PeriodicalId":47712,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Economics","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140045920","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Firms increasingly have to contend with trade regulations to access foreign markets. We quantify their relative importance and the heterogeneous effects for Colombians firms exporting to Latin America between 2007 and 2017, focusing on specific types and channels. Using panel evidence from a firm‐level gravity model with a difference‐in‐differences identification strategy, technical barriers to trade (TBTs) and quantity control measures both decrease trade on average. Other non‐tariff measures and tariffs play a minor role. At its core, TBT and quantity measures reallocate trade from small to big firms. The same mechanism benefits firms participating in global value chains. However, quantity controls make it more likely that big firm will leave export markets to the benefit of smaller ones. Our results control for the endogeneity of trade regulations and are robust to the use of different samples and measures of firm size.
{"title":"Barrier or opportunity? How trade regulations shape Colombian firms' export strategies","authors":"Samuel Rosenow","doi":"10.1111/roie.12739","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/roie.12739","url":null,"abstract":"Firms increasingly have to contend with trade regulations to access foreign markets. We quantify their relative importance and the heterogeneous effects for Colombians firms exporting to Latin America between 2007 and 2017, focusing on specific types and channels. Using panel evidence from a firm‐level gravity model with a difference‐in‐differences identification strategy, technical barriers to trade (TBTs) and quantity control measures both decrease trade on average. Other non‐tariff measures and tariffs play a minor role. At its core, TBT and quantity measures reallocate trade from small to big firms. The same mechanism benefits firms participating in global value chains. However, quantity controls make it more likely that big firm will leave export markets to the benefit of smaller ones. Our results control for the endogeneity of trade regulations and are robust to the use of different samples and measures of firm size.","PeriodicalId":47712,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Economics","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139980433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
With falling tariffs the role of regulatory heterogeneity in international trade has become central in recent debates about regional integration and trade costs. In describing the NTM incidence few studies explicitly take into account the specific nature of underlying regulatory differences. We propose distinguishing regulatory heterogeneity with respect to the intensity, coverage, and structure of regulations, and present indicators reflecting each one of these dimensions. Enabled by detailed product‐level regulatory data based on coded reviews of national legislation, we illustrate the different channels of regulatory heterogeneity on the country‐ and sector‐level. The findings motivate a separate treatment of the different heterogeneity dimensions in the assessment of non‐tariff measures in international trade.
{"title":"Patterns of regulatory heterogeneity in international trade: Intensity, coverage, and structure","authors":"Irene Garcés, Achim Vogt","doi":"10.1111/roie.12736","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/roie.12736","url":null,"abstract":"With falling tariffs the role of regulatory heterogeneity in international trade has become central in recent debates about regional integration and trade costs. In describing the NTM incidence few studies explicitly take into account the specific nature of underlying regulatory differences. We propose distinguishing regulatory heterogeneity with respect to the intensity, coverage, and structure of regulations, and present indicators reflecting each one of these dimensions. Enabled by detailed product‐level regulatory data based on coded reviews of national legislation, we illustrate the different channels of regulatory heterogeneity on the country‐ and sector‐level. The findings motivate a separate treatment of the different heterogeneity dimensions in the assessment of non‐tariff measures in international trade.","PeriodicalId":47712,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Economics","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139953617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper examines spatial spillovers in the formation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) through a new channel of institutional proximity. Our dependent variable is the status of PTAs between country attributes within a country‐pair. The explanatory variable of interest is the status of PTAs in neighbouring country‐pairs that share proximity in institutional development. We consider democracy and economic freedom as the main aspects of institutions, and use both as the fundamental components of institutional distance between country‐pairs. Employing a spatial econometric method, we find strong evidence of the institutional interdependence of PTAs: country‐pairs tend to influence each other's decision on the formation and the chosen type of PTAs (i.e., deep or shallow), such a neighbourhood effect increases with institutional proximity and is more prominent for the decisions on the type of PTAs. The institutional spatial channel is robust to various robustness checks.
{"title":"Spatial spillovers in trade agreement memberships: Does institutional proximity matter?","authors":"Renliang Liu, Thanasis Stengos, Yiguo Sun","doi":"10.1111/roie.12740","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/roie.12740","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines spatial spillovers in the formation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) through a new channel of institutional proximity. Our dependent variable is the status of PTAs between country attributes within a country‐pair. The explanatory variable of interest is the status of PTAs in neighbouring country‐pairs that share proximity in institutional development. We consider democracy and economic freedom as the main aspects of institutions, and use both as the fundamental components of institutional distance between country‐pairs. Employing a spatial econometric method, we find strong evidence of the institutional interdependence of PTAs: country‐pairs tend to influence each other's decision on the formation and the chosen type of PTAs (i.e., deep or shallow), such a neighbourhood effect increases with institutional proximity and is more prominent for the decisions on the type of PTAs. The institutional spatial channel is robust to various robustness checks.","PeriodicalId":47712,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Economics","volume":"114 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139953618","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Massimiliano Calì, Marco Le Moglie, Giorgio Presidente
This paper extends the evidence on the impact of trade reforms on firms by focusing on non-tariff measures (NTMs), an increasingly important trade policy instrument in advanced and developing economies. We build a novel time-varying dataset on all NTMs applied to imported products by Indonesia and quantify the trade distortions they generate. We find that unlike tariffs, which reduce plants' productivity, NTMs do not significantly affect plants' performance. However, the most trade-reducing NTMs are associated with lower plant-level markups, which is consistent with the increase in the cost of imported inputs induced by these NTMs.
{"title":"Gain without pain? Non-tariff measures, plant markup, and productivity","authors":"Massimiliano Calì, Marco Le Moglie, Giorgio Presidente","doi":"10.1111/roie.12731","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/roie.12731","url":null,"abstract":"This paper extends the evidence on the impact of trade reforms on firms by focusing on non-tariff measures (NTMs), an increasingly important trade policy instrument in advanced and developing economies. We build a novel time-varying dataset on all NTMs applied to imported products by Indonesia and quantify the trade distortions they generate. We find that unlike tariffs, which reduce plants' productivity, NTMs do not significantly affect plants' performance. However, the most trade-reducing NTMs are associated with lower plant-level markups, which is consistent with the increase in the cost of imported inputs induced by these NTMs.","PeriodicalId":47712,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Economics","volume":"62 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139677895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper introduces a model of corporate governance into the general oligopolistic equilibrium theory of international trade. Corporate governance defines the influence of workers and capital owners on manager contract and, through this contract, the scope of these two groups for subsequent rent extraction in the wage/employment negotiation between firms and unions. If capital owners have dictatorship over the manager contract, they can extract the full bargaining surplus and eliminate the union wage premium. If workers have dictatorship over the manager contract they can achieve a wage premium, driving the income of capital owners down to zero. In this setting, opening up to trade is to the detriment of the income group whose interests are decisive for the manager contract. This shows that distributional conflicts materializing from trade can be considerably different for countries with differing corporate governance regimes. Foreign investment allows capital owners in unionized industries to flee from disadvantageous corporate governance regimes at home, eliminating union wage premia and lowering manager remuneration in countries with corporate governance regimes that give workers dictatorship over manager contracts.
{"title":"International trade and income distribution: The effect of corporate governance regimes","authors":"Hartmut Egger, Peter H. Egger, Douglas Nelson","doi":"10.1111/roie.12728","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/roie.12728","url":null,"abstract":"This paper introduces a model of corporate governance into the general oligopolistic equilibrium theory of international trade. Corporate governance defines the influence of workers and capital owners on manager contract and, through this contract, the scope of these two groups for subsequent rent extraction in the wage/employment negotiation between firms and unions. If capital owners have dictatorship over the manager contract, they can extract the full bargaining surplus and eliminate the union wage premium. If workers have dictatorship over the manager contract they can achieve a wage premium, driving the income of capital owners down to zero. In this setting, opening up to trade is to the detriment of the income group whose interests are decisive for the manager contract. This shows that distributional conflicts materializing from trade can be considerably different for countries with differing corporate governance regimes. Foreign investment allows capital owners in unionized industries to flee from disadvantageous corporate governance regimes at home, eliminating union wage premia and lowering manager remuneration in countries with corporate governance regimes that give workers dictatorship over manager contracts.","PeriodicalId":47712,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Economics","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139647802","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Magdalena Szyszko, Agata Kliber, Aleksandra Rutkowska, Mariusz Próchniak
We seek to investigate the effects of communication by central banks on professional and consumer inflation expectations. Accordingly, we investigate 12 small open economies implementing inflation targeting. The communication tone of the central banks is determined based on their post-decision releases. We use computational linguistics to quantify this factor. With regard to two subsamples that are identified based on the central bank's experience in inflation targeting, we estimate panel models while controlling for other prospective drivers of expectations. The communication tone of a central bank significantly affects the expectations of professional forecasters from economies with more experience in inflation targeting.
{"title":"Central bank communication and expectations: Evidence for inflation-targeting economies","authors":"Magdalena Szyszko, Agata Kliber, Aleksandra Rutkowska, Mariusz Próchniak","doi":"10.1111/roie.12730","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/roie.12730","url":null,"abstract":"We seek to investigate the effects of communication by central banks on professional and consumer inflation expectations. Accordingly, we investigate 12 small open economies implementing inflation targeting. The communication tone of the central banks is determined based on their post-decision releases. We use computational linguistics to quantify this factor. With regard to two subsamples that are identified based on the central bank's experience in inflation targeting, we estimate panel models while controlling for other prospective drivers of expectations. The communication tone of a central bank significantly affects the expectations of professional forecasters from economies with more experience in inflation targeting.","PeriodicalId":47712,"journal":{"name":"Review of International Economics","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139518353","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}