Canadian Journal of Economics-Revue Canadienne D Economique最新文献

The existing empirical literature on impact of GATT/WTO membership on international trade is mixed. This paper contributes to solving the puzzle of “the missing GATT/WTO effects” by adhering closely to the theoretical foundations of the gravity model of trade. Capitalizing on the latest developments in the empirical trade literature and building a new and large data set covering 186 countries over the period 1980–2016, we estimate a theory-consistent gravity equation, which includes intra-national in addition to international trade flows. We find that joining GATT/WTO increased partial equilibrium trade between members by 140%. Our methods also deliver novel estimates of the impact of GATT/WTO on trade between members and non-member countries, indicating an increase of 72%.

This paper finds that major 2006 Chinese environmental reforms creating mandatory emission reduction targets led firms to significantly reduce emissions, especially for firms in more polluting industries. A decomposition of the overall effect shows that firms relied primarily on technology upgrading (75.3%) rather than output cuts (24.7%) in meeting the regulatory changes. The driving forces for this “technique effect” are more water recycling and abatement device adoption. While polluting firms did not increase their green innovation, local equipment manufacturers—likely suppliers—did significantly increase green water patent applications, indicating an expanded environmental service market effect. Tests on firms' economic responses provide more evidence for an “internal” variant of the pollution haven hypothesis because firms' profit, capital, employment, market shares, and entry were all negatively affected by the more stringent regulation.

Border carbon taxes are considered as an important instrument to promote sustainable practices abroad and to level the playing field for domestic emission-intensive and trade-exposed (EITE) industries. We find that US emissions pricing plays a critical role in the effectiveness of border carbon taxes in protecting the international competitiveness of Canadian EITE producers. Border carbon taxes are more effective when the US follows the other OECD countries with stringent CO₂ emissions pricing than when the US abstains from emissions pricing. In the latter case, border carbon taxes reduce the competitiveness of Canadian EITE export supply to the US (Canada's most important export destination), weakening the initial protective effect of border carbon taxes on the Canadian domestic market.

We show the effects of cross-ownership on product differentiation, consumer surplus and welfare under Cournot and Bertrand competition. Under Cournot competition, cross-ownership increases (decreases) product differentiation if demand expansion following product differentiation is large (small). Under Bertrand competition, cross-ownership may increase or decrease product differentiation regardless of the demand expansion effect of product differentiation. Cross-ownership may increase consumer surplus and welfare under both Cournot and Bertrand competition. Demand expansion following product differentiation and the type of product market competition play important roles for the effects of cross-ownership in an industry with endogenous product differentiation. We also show that Cournot competition may create higher consumer surplus and welfare compared with Bertrand competition.

Research has extensively explored why firms use their consumer information to price discriminate between repeat and new customers. This paper incorporates overlapping ownership and explores a more nuanced explanation for the practice. We isolate the different and interactive effects of overlapping ownership in different periods on equilibrium outcomes. In our explanation, firms use overlapping ownership to increase repeat purchase and customer retention and therefore may charge higher prices for both repeat and new customers, when they choose behaviour-based pricing rather than uniform pricing. As a result, if the degree of overlapping ownership is not too small, behaviour-based pricing benefits firms but hurts consumers.

With the help of a new, comprehensive sanctions database and utilizing the latest developments in the structural gravity literature, we estimate the effects of economic sanctions on international trade. We demonstrate that the average effects of sanctions hide significant heterogeneity depending on the type of sanctions considered, their duration, objectives and sender types. We also zoom in on the sanctions against Iran. We find that their effects are significant but also widely heterogeneous across sanctioning countries, even within the European Union, and depend on the direction of trade. We complement the aggregate analysis with estimates for 170 sectors, showing that sanctions have been effective in decreasing bilateral trade at the sectoral level while the effects vary significantly across sectors and across complete versus partial trade sanctions.

If immigration can benefit the Canadian economy, but must be limited to realize the benefit, what is the optimal level? The Canadian government is increasing immigration rates to levels not reached since the 1920s in the hope of addressing labour shortages and sluggish economic growth. We argue that economic immigration in the Canadian context should aim to raise GDP per capita in the population, including the newcomers, and examine the potential for increases in Canadian immigration rates to achieve this objective. Our analysis suggests that Canada is not well positioned to leverage heightened immigration to increase GDP per capita owing primarily to weak capital investment and quantity–quality tradeoffs in immigrant selection. We propose a policy rule for defining the optimal level of economic immigration.

This study investigates the welfare consequences of common ownership in a successive vertical oligopoly, in which upstream firms produce a homogeneous input and compete in quantities, while downstream firms produce differentiated final products and compete either in quantities or prices. Common ownership in both markets internalizes a negative horizontal externality and a positive vertical externality. The interaction between these externalities shapes market outcomes. Our main results are summarized as follows. If the downstream market is monopolized, common ownership always improves welfare. However, if the upstream market is monopolized, common ownership benefits welfare under Bertrand competition but harms it under Cournot competition when the downstream market is competitive. Further, greater upstream competition weakens the pro-competitive effect. Under Bertrand (Cournot) competition, common ownership harms welfare unless the upstream is (both upstream and downstream markets are) highly concentrated. These results suggest that whether common ownership benefits consumers and social welfare is crucially dependent on the competitiveness of upstream and downstream markets and the competition mode in the downstream market.

This paper revisits Baker et al.'s (2016) main finding that shows the significant negative impacts of shocks to the Economic Policy Uncertainty index on the US aggregate economic activity. We focus on subsample analyses with sample periods extended to December 2022. We find that shocks to the index do not significantly affect the economy during the period from September 2008 to December 2019, in contrast to significant negative impacts found in the sample ending earlier. Interestingly, this feature is specific to the Economic Policy Uncertainty index, while other popular uncertainty measures retain downward pressures on the economy across all of the subsample periods under examination. Economic Policy Uncertainty again deters economic activity once the COVID-19 period is included in the sample, implying that the size of shocks and/or the state of the economy may play an additional role for its transmission.

This paper uses digitized US trade flows data at the customs district level from 1870 to 1900 to investigate whether trade shocks had an effect on the size and composition of the population of US ports and on their economic activity. I find that trade increased the population of districts, driven principally by growth in urban populations, and that manufacturing activity also increased. However, these results dissipate rapidly with distance: counties adjacent to ports do not see similar gains from trade booms at nearby ports. My results imply that trade was a contributing factor in the structural transformation of America's economy.