世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

The gravity model has been widely used to infer substantial trade flow effects of institutions such as customs unions and exchange rate mechanisms. McCallum [1995] found that the US-Canada border led to trade between provinces that is a factor 22 (2,200%) times trade between states and provinces, a spectacular puzzle in light of the low formal barriers on this border. We show that the gravity model usually estimated does not correspond to the theory behind it. We solve the 'border puzzle' by applying the theory seriously. We find that national borders reduce trade between the US and Canada by about 44%, while reducing trade among other industrialized countries by about 30%. McCallum's spectacular headline number is the result of a combination of omitted variables bias and the small size of the Canadian economy. Within-Canada trade rises by a factor 6 due to the border. In contrast, within-US trade rises 25%.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=256086

Gravity with Gravitas: A Solution to the Border Puzzle

This article builds a theoretical framework to help explain governance patterns in global value chains It draws on three streams of literature ‐ transaction costs economics, production networks, and technological capability and firm-level learning ‐ to identify three variables that play a large role in determining how global value chains are governed and change These are: (1) the complexity of transactions, (2) the ability to codify transactions, and (3) the capabilities in the supply-base The theory generates five types of global value chain governance ‐ hierarchy, captive, relational, modular, and market ‐ which range from high to low levels of explicit coordination and power asymmetry The article highlights the dynamic and overlapping nature of global value chain governance through four brief industry case studies: bicycles, apparel, horticulture and electronics

/pdf/the-governance-of-global-value-chains-3dmchifo7i.pdf

The governance of global value chains

Gravity equations have been widely used to infer trade flow effects of various institutional arrangements. We show that estimated gravity equations do not have a theoretical foundation. This implies both that estimation suffers from omitted variables bias and that comparative statics analysis is unfounded. We develop a method that (i) consistently and efficiently estimates a theoretical gravity equation and (ii) correctly calculates the comparative statics of trade frictions. We apply the method to solve the famous McCallum border puzzle. Applying our method, we find that national borders reduce trade between industrialized countries by moderate amounts of 20-50 percent.

/pdf/gravity-with-gravitas-a-solution-to-the-border-puzzle-4dn7us6msp.pdf

This paper develops techniques for empirically analyzing demand and supply in differentiated products markets and then applies these techniques to analyze equilibrium in the U.S. automobile industry. Our primary goal is to present a framework which enables one to obtain estimates of demand and cost parameters for a class of oligopolistic differentiated products markets. These estimates can be obtained using only widely available product-level and aggregate consumer-level data, and they are consistent with a structural model of equilibrium in an oligopolistic industry. When we apply the tech- niques developed here to the U.S. automobile market, we obtain cost and demand parameters for (essentially) all models marketed over a twenty year period.

/pdf/automobile-prices-in-market-equilibrium-1w0xnf91hi.pdf

Automobile prices in market equilibrium

We view the political process in China as trading off the social benefits of increased trade and foreign direct investment, against the losses incurred by state-owned enterprises due to such liberalization. A model drawing on Grossman and Helpman (1994, 1996) is used to derive an empirically estimable government objective function. The key structural parameters of this model are estimated using province-level data on foreign direct investment and trade flows in China, over the years 1984-1995. We find that the weight applied to consumer welfare is between one-fifth and one-twelfth of the weight applied to the output of state-owned enterprises. We find that governmental preferences have shifted over time, but even in recent periods the weight on consumer welfare is only one-half of the weight on state-owned enterprises. This suggests that China may find it politically difficult to follow through with liberalizing its trade and investment regimes, such as under its WTO accession proposal.

Trade and Foreign Direct Investment in China: a Political Economy Approach

A two-country trade model with production uncertainty is considered. If complete contingent markets do not exist, it is desirable for governments to adopt some trade policies to share the production risk. A full information policy involves incomes transfers across countries, which can be achieved by equal import tariffs and export subsidies. With incomplete information we consider incentive compatible trade policies, which are designed to be truth revealing while partially sharing the production risk. In this case the tariff in one country may differ from the export subsidy abroad.

/pdf/incentive-compatible-trade-policies-9p6rsyhg9i.pdf

Incentive Compatible Trade Policies

These two volumes contain seventy essays chosen largely for the originality of their contributions. The first volume contains several classic papers. Among them are the many contributions to the theory of distortions in the 1960s which laid the foundations of the postwar theory of commercial policy. Also included are Bhagwati's important papers of the 1970s and 1980s which have shaped a new revolution in the theory of trade and welfare: the political-economy-theoretic analysis of DUP (directly-unproductive profit-seeking) activities. Influential essays on the nonequivalence of tariffs and quotas, immiserizing growth, cost-benefit analysis in open economies, and other major areas of trade theory are covered. The second volume presents essays that have opened up new areas of analysis in the theory of international trade and in the associated fields of public finance and developmental economics. Bhagwati's seminal work on the novel question of the appropriate income tax jurisdiction in the presence of international factor mobility, his well-known analyses of the consequences of skilled migration, the problem of the optimal choice between international capital and labor mobility, are all included.

International factor mobility

When materials offshoring is measured by estimating imported intermediate inputs, a common assumption used is that an industry's imports of each input, relative to its total demand, is the same as the economy-wide imports relative to total demand: this is the so-called "import comparability" or "proportionality" assumption. A report to the National Research Council identified this assumption as being a significant limitation of current data collection and analysis. In this note we move beyond this assumption to obtain a direct measure of imported materials by industry for the United States in 1997. At the 3-digit I-O industry level, there is a correlation of 0.68 between the offshoring shares made with and without the proportionality assumption, and a higher correlation of 0.87 when the shares are value weighted. While most value-weighted industry have differences below 50 percentage points in the two estimates, there is significant number of cases that differ by 10 percentage points or more.

Evaluating Estimates of Materials Offshoring from U.S. Manufacturing

Since 1995, growth in productivity in the United States appears to have accelerated dramatically In this paper, we argue that part of this apparent speed-up actually represents gains in the terms of trade and tariff reductions, especially for information-technology products We demonstrate how unmeasured gains in the terms of trade and declines in tariffs can cause conventionally measured growth in real output and productivity to be overstated Building on the GDP function approach of Diewert and Morrison, we develop methods for measuring these effects From 1995 through 2006, the average growth rates of our alternative price indexes for US imports are 15% per year lower than the growth rate of price indexes calculated using official methods Thus properly measured terms-of-trade gain can account for close to 02 percentage points per year, or about 20%, of the 1995-2006 apparent increase in productivity growth for the US economy Bias in the price indexes used to deflate domestic output is a question beyond the scope of this paper, but if upward bias were also present in those indexes, this could offset some of the effects of mismeasurement of gains in terms of trade

Robert C. Feenstra

Papers

Trade and Foreign Direct Investment in China: a Political Economy Approach

Incentive Compatible Trade Policies

International factor mobility

Evaluating Estimates of Materials Offshoring from U.S. Manufacturing

Effects of Terms of Trade Gains and Tariff Changes on the Measurement of U.S. Productivity Growth