Trade at the margin: Estimating the economic implications of preferential trade agreements

Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) have become the most prevalent form of international trade liberalization in recent decades, even though it remains far from clear what their effects on economies and their key units, firms, are. This paper evaluates the distributional consequences of trade liberalization within industries differentiating two distinct aspects in which trade liberalization could result in higher trade flows: the intensive vs. the extensive margin of trade. In particular, we analyze whether trade liberalization leads to increased trade flows because either firms trade more volume in products they have already traded before (intensive margin) or because they start to trade products they have not traded previously (extensive margin), or both. We test these arguments for the Dominican Republic–Central America–United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) and exporting firms based in Costa Rica for the time-period 2008–2014. The results of our study suggest that the effects of CAFTA-DR depend not only on whether we analyze the extensive versus the intensive margin of trade but also whether the product in question is homogenous or differentiated and whether the exporting firm under analysis is small or large. In particular, we find support for the theoretical expectation that firms exporting heterogeneous products, such as textiles, gain from trade agreements, such as CAFTA-DR, in that they can export more varieties of their products. Yet at the same time, they tend to lose at the intensive margin by a reduction in their trade volume while the opposite pattern occurs for firms exporting homogenous products.     

论俄罗斯经济发展模式的转变

俄罗斯经过8年的持续经济增长,国力日益强大,但主要靠出口资源性产品换取外汇难以实现富民强国和民族振兴的战略目标.要保持社会经济可持续发展和应对日益激烈的国际竞争,普京政府适时明确地提出了经济发展模式的转换,即从资源型经济转向创新型经济.为推动经济发展模式的转换,俄罗斯的经贸政策已开始进行重大调整,这种调整不但对俄罗斯的产业、经济和社会生活将产生重要影响,也将对俄罗斯的主要经贸伙伴产生很大冲击.俄罗斯的经济发展模式转型不但是一个漫长的过程,同时也面l临着各种挑战和一定风险;如果普京政府仅仅提出了正确的经济发展方向和发展道路,而不能有效地解决经济发展模式转型过程中必然要遇到的各种难题,不但模式转换的目标不能实现,还要面临着不小的政治风险.     

ASEAN cooperation: the legacy of the economic crisis

This article examines the implications of domestic politicalchanges in the post-1997 era for ASEAN's regional cooperationand institutionalization. The conceptual framework traces regionalrelations to the makeup and grand strategies of domestic coalitions(internationalizing, hybrid, backlash). Had some predictionsin the immediate aftermath of the crisis been fulfilled, theadvent of domestic backlash coalitions would have portendedlower levels of regional cooperation. Alternatively, in theabsence of changes in the fundamental nature of most rulingcoalitions after the crisis, ASEAN's cooperative thrust wasexpected to be maintained. The article explores the extent towhich ASEAN's activities in the post-crisis era supports eitherof these two propositions. It finds that a shock of major proportionsin Southeast Asia led to some immediate challenges to bilateralrelations. At the same time, the aftermath of the crisis ledto considerable multilateral and bilateral cooperation on economicissues, expansion, intervention, and security. Furthermore,cooperation may have indeed improved despite subsequent crises,including 9/11 and its aftermath. Yet no linear progressionor irrevocable process towards internationalization or regionalcooperation can be assumed. Alternative coalitions, and theirpotential for changing regional trajectories, must be reckonedwith.     

The emerging economic architecture of the new Europe

The purpose of this paper is to put into historical context and current perspective the ongoing discussions about the economic changes in Eastern Europe and the institutional responses that they have elicited. The paper will review the economic ‘regime? that existed in East‐West relations until about 1988 and discuss the proposals that are emerging for both new institutions and for older ones. The paper's historical scope will be limited to the period until the opening of the CSCE Helsinki Review Conference, that started in April 1992.     

EU-China relations and the limits of economic diplomacy

This paper addresses a key problem in EU-China economic relations: the capacity of the EU to exert leverage through its economic diplomacy in the context of key economic trends, policy dilemmas, and processes of governance. The paper begins by identifying key elements of the EU’s economic diplomacy and their relationship to key functions: deliberation, representation, communication, and negotiation. It continues by reviewing key trends and challenges in EU-China economic relations, in terms of trade, finance/investment, and broader issues of economic performance, with special reference to the problems emanating from the current economic turbulence both in the EU and in the broader global political economy. It then identifies a number of key policy dilemmas for the EU in areas such as trade defense/trade promotion, environment/development, security/commercial priorities, investment/sovereignty, and explores these in terms of three key concepts: orientation, coordination, and effectiveness. In pursuing this analysis, the paper relates these trends and dilemmas to attempts to govern EU-China economic relations: public/private, bilateral/multilateral, and regulatory/political. In the final section of the paper, these efforts are evaluated in the context of the EU’s economic diplomacy, with relation to key actors, processes, and outcomes and to the key functions of deliberation, representation, communication, and negotiation.     

后危机时代俄罗斯经济发展悖论探析

由美国次贷危机所引发的世界金融危机对每一个国家的经济都产生了很大的冲击,俄罗斯也未能幸免。但金融危机的影响时效有多长,后危机时代经济发展的推动点何在,是许多国家所共同关注的问题。本文梳理了后危机时代世界经济的发展趋势与特征,对比了俄罗斯经济与世界经济的发展趋势,得出他们之间存在一定的悖论。     

日本经济安全保障理论辨析

日本是对经济安全问题研究比较早的国家之一,形成了独具特色的经济安全保障理论。在日本的经济安全保障理论中,关于什么是经济安全保障以及经济安全保障与军事安全保障、综合安全保障、人类安全保障的关系等问题,在不同的时代产生了各种各样的观点,对此要进行综合地辨析,才能真正理解日本的经济安全保障理论,从而能够更好地理解日本安全保障政策。     

Environmental and economic cooperation in the Mekong region

Greater Mekong Subregional Integration has been promoted quite remarkably in the past decade with the support from key international and regional actors. Hard and soft infrastructure has been developed extensively. The road connection development in the Greater Mekong Subregion under the framework of East–West Corridor and North–South Corridor encourages more human and goods exchanges. The policy coordination and harmonization among the countries in the region have been upgraded but at a very slow pace. The future of the regional integration in the region is realizable through hard and soft infrastructure integration. As this article attempts to demonstrate, the main concern, though, still surrounds the issue of political willingness and real cooperation.     

Regionalizing Multilateralism: Estimating the Power of Potential Regional Voting Blocs in the IMF

This paper explores the voting power of hypothetical regional voting blocs in the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund. We first discuss the prospect of regionally defined groups becoming more significant in the Fund’s decision-making process. After briefly outlining the IMF’s formal decision procedures, including its weighted voting system, use of special majorities, and the function of voting groups in the Fund’s Executive Board we define three indices of a priori voting power — the Banzhaf, Johnston, and Shapley-Shubik indices — which are then applied to existing voting groups. Following this we simulate several regionally defined a priori coalitions and their potential to influence outcomes in passing resolutions in the Fund using a simple majority. The coalitions we specify are based on the assumption that members of the IMF will form into voting blocs based on regionally-defined preferences. The procedures employed use existing voting weights to project the relative strengths of alternative regional blocs that could emerge within the IMF. Our results indicate that the United States would have the greatest voting power in almost all scenarios. A voting bloc comprised of European countries, however, would be able to dominate the United States unless the U.S. formed an Asia-Pacific bloc. Japan, the PRC, and other Asian countries appear to be unable to form voting blocs that would provide them with more voting power than the United States.     

Study on Xinjiang’s bilateral trade using a gravity model

Based on the basic trade gravity model and Xinjiang’s practical situation, new explanatory variables (GDP, GDPpc and SCO) are introduced to build an augmented trade gravity model adapted to Xinjiang’s bilateral trade. From the empirical analysis of this model, it proposes that these three variables affect the Xinjiang’s bilateral trade positively. Whereas, geographic distance is found a significant factor influencing Xinjiang’s bilateral trade negatively. Then, the augmented trade gravity model analyzes the present trade situation between Xinjiang and its main trade partners in 2004 quantitatively. It indicates that Xinjiang cooperates with its most trade partners successfully in terms of present economic scale and developing level. Xinjiang has established successful trade partnership with Central Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Western Europe, East Asia and South Asia. However, the foreign trade development with West Asia is much slower. Finally, some suggestions on developing Xinjiang's foreign trade are put forward.     

梅德韦杰夫经济现代化方案评析

在金融危机背景下,梅德韦杰夫提出了俄罗斯全面实现现代化的主张,并开出了以振兴五大高科技领域为核心的经济现代化方案.俄罗斯社会围绕现代化问题展开了激烈争论.精英阶层从不同角度提出了不同的现代化模式,这些模式分别是以工业化为核心的现代化、以实现后工业发展为核心的现代化、保守主义的现代化、自由主义的现代化和社会主义现代化.不...     

The long march: the lessons of China's economic transition

It is widely known that Chinese transition to market economy was influenced by the newly industrialized Asian countries—Malaysia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong—but it is not as much evident that Chinese reform was also influenced by the economic reforms of Hungary. Hungary started market-oriented reforms in the late 1960s by introducing market-orientated measures in agriculture, in manufacturing, in retail trade, and in finances, which made Hungarian economy more flexible and efficient than other European socialist countries. It could be shown that the first market-oriented reform measures applied in China during the 1980s and 1990s have large similarities to the Hungarian reform introduced earlier. In that respect, we can say that Chinese economic reform has adapted lots of elements of the early Hungarian economic reform. At the same time, Hungarian reforms have died away, but after the “lost decade of the 1980s,” there was an extremely rapid transition to market economy, which—in spite of the seemingly successful beginning—could not contribute to a long-term and healthy economic development. Meanwhile in China, economic reform was rather successful, resulting in an unprecedented economic development at the end of the twentieth century. Authors of the present article analyse similarities of the Hungarian and Chinese reforms and try to explain the causes of the Hungarian failure and the Chinese success. “Let China Sleep, for when the Dragon awakes, she will shake the world.” The saying is attributed to Napoleon and he seems to have been right. Now that China has reversed the process of globalization and has become the winner, we should resignedly accept that China is wide awake. The country's economy has followed a rapid growth path thus China's economic dominance is felt in the entire Far East; moreover, the country with the highest population in the world the country is taking steps to emerge as a world power. The dragon is awake, and she is not going to take a great leap forward but instead it is now on the long march. In lieu of her specific tools, China is about to win: she is already one of the winners, if not the only winner of globalization.     

A distributional theory of economic democracy

In the twentieth century, while political democracy triumphed economic democracy failed both as an idea and in practice. A case for reviving the idea of economic democracy is made in terms of protecting political democracy. Economic democracy has conventionally been understood as a matter of bringing economic power under the control of collective political power. The idea is here reformulated as a matter of redistributing economic power between persons, of giving people a share in economic power directly rather than through elected representatives. Political democracy is assumed, which is to say that political power is under the control of the middle class. The question then is under what conditions the middle class might want and think it could use political power to redistribute economic power. The conclusions are that there is in advanced capitalist democracies considerable scope for the redistribution of economic power between the rich and the middle class. As for the empowerment of the poor, however, anti-poverty policies beyond the containment of poverty are unlikely to emerge today in countries where that did not happen under earlier historical conditions.     

俄罗斯经济增长的基础与前景——“俄罗斯经济结构问题”学术研讨会综述

进入21世纪以来,俄罗斯经济表现不俗,成为近年来实现快速增长的重要经济体之一.在经历了20世纪90年代的经济转轨阵痛之后,在有利的世界能源原材料市场行情的支持下,俄罗斯实现了持续的经济增长.但俄罗斯目前的经济增长是否能够持续下去,这种疑虑困扰着俄罗斯的官员、民众、学者以及国际学术界.领导俄罗斯人民取得9年持续经济增长成就的普京政府认为,俄罗斯依然面临"生死存亡的危机".     

西伯利亚大铁路对俄国东部地区经济社会的影响

西伯利亚大铁路的修建使俄国东部地区的社会生活发生了显著变化。它促进了东部地区的移民,引发了两次移民运动的高潮;随着铁路的修建,东部地区的居民点数量大幅增加;西伯利亚大铁路管理局作出了在东部地区建立社会基础设施的尝试。     

当前乌克兰经济形势及影响因素分析——兼论中乌经贸合作

1999年以来,乌克兰经济总体保持高速增长。全球金融危机对乌克兰实体经济部门产生严重影响,导致乌克兰经济急剧下滑。目前乌克兰经济金融等指标逐步趋近金融危机前的水平。由于对外部资源的依赖性高、实体经济现代化程度低和先进技术引进不足、经济结构优化困难大等因素影响,目前乌克兰实体经济的发展依旧不乐观。综合各方面的因素,我们发现乌克兰未来经济发展潜力巨大,主要表现为:乌克兰国内有相对较大的不饱和市场,工业现代化在新技术条件下具备很大的发展潜力,农业具备较大发展潜力。2011～2012年,乌克兰经济的完全复苏很有可能实现,当前形势下重视乌克兰研究对中乌经贸合作有重大意义。