United States International Trade Commission

About: United States International Trade Commission is a government organization based out in Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Computable general equilibrium & China. The organization has 101 authors who have published 210 publications receiving 9041 citations. The organization is also known as: USITC & ITC.

Tracing Value-Added and Double Counting in Gross Exports

Abstract: This paper proposes a framework for gross exports accounting that breaks up a country's gross exports into various value-added components by source and additional double counted terms. By identifying which parts of the official trade data are double counted and the sources of the double counting, it bridges official trade (in gross value terms) and national accounts statistics (in value added terms). Our parsimonious framework integrates all previous measures of vertical specialization and value-added trade in the literature into a unified framework. To illustrate the potential of such a method, we present a number of applications including re-computing revealed comparative advantages and the magnifying impact of multi-stage production on trade costs.

Tracing Value-Added and Double Counting in Gross Exports†

Abstract: This paper proposes an accounting framework that breaks up a country’s gross exports into various value-added components by source and additional double-counted terms. Our parsimonious framework bridges a gap between official trade statistics ( in gross value terms) and national accounts (in value-added terms), and integrates all previous measures of vertical specialization and value-added trade in the literature into a unified framework. To illustrate the potential of such a method, we present a number of applications including re-computing revealed comparative advantages and the magnifying impact of multi-stage production on trade costs. (JEL E01, E16, F14, F23, L14) As different stages of production are now regularly performed in different countries, intermediate inputs cross borders multiple times. As a result, traditional trade statistics become increasingly less reliable as a gauge of the value contributed by any particular country. This paper integrates and generalizes the many attempts in the literature at tracing value added by country and measuring vertical specialization in international trade. We provide a unified conceptual framework that is more comprehensive than the current literature. By design, this is an accounting exercise, and does not directly examine the causes and the consequences of global production chains. However, an accurate and well-defined conceptual framework to account for value added by sources is a necessary step toward a better under standing of all these issues. Supply chains can be described as a system of value-added sources and destinations. Within a supply chain, each producer purchases inputs and then adds value, which is included in the cost of the next stage of production. At each stage, the value added equals the value paid to the factors of production in the exporting country. However, as all official trade statistics are measured in gross terms, which

Give credit where credit is due: tracing value added in global production chains

Abstract: This paper presents a new conceptual framework to measure sources of value-added trade by country in global production networks. With a parsimonious decomposition of gross exports that eliminates "double counting", it integrates all previous measures of vertical specialization and value-added trade in the literature. We apply the framework to the most recent appropriate data (2004). Among emerging markets, East Asian countries are the most globally integrated. Among major developed economies, the US is the most integrated in some aspects, and Japan in others. These regional differences also affect exporters’ trade costs.

The New Institutionalism Contradictory Notions of Change

Abstract: It is suggested that the new institutionalism contains ambiguous and contradictory notions of change. By setting up a model that explains institutional constraints on decision makers, the new institutionalism correctly points out the limits of a rational choice framework of economic decision making. However, by failing to explain the sources and avenues of modifications of those constraints, the new institutionalism is unable to provide a satisfactory explanation of change. Instead, a patchwork of exogenous factors is found, such as technology, culture, and ideology, which feed into institutional change in unclear ways. Those factors for change should be examined directly, rather than through the proxy of institutions.