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Articles 1 - 30 of 143
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Migration And Resource Misallocation In China, Xiaolu Li, Lin Ma, Yang Tang
Migration And Resource Misallocation In China, Xiaolu Li, Lin Ma, Yang Tang
Research Collection School Of Economics
We structurally estimate the firm-level frictions across prefectures in China and quantify their aggregate and distributional implications. Based on a general equilibrium model with input and output distortions and migration, we show that the firm-level frictions are less dispersed and less correlated with firm productivity in richer prefectures. Counterfactual exercises show that reducing the within-prefecture misallocation increases aggregate welfare, discourages migration toward large prefectures, and reduces spatial inequality. Moreover, internal migration alleviates micro-frictions’ impacts on aggregate welfare and worsens their effects on spatial inequality.
The Distributional Impacts Of Transportation Networks In China, Lin Ma, Yang Tang
The Distributional Impacts Of Transportation Networks In China, Lin Ma, Yang Tang
Research Collection School Of Economics
We document that the quality of roads and railroads vary substantially over time and space in China, and neglecting these variations biases the distributional impacts of transportation networks. To account for quality differences, we construct a new panel dataset and approximate quality using the design speed of roads and railroads that varies by vintage, class, and terrain at the pixel level. We then build a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model for multiple modes, transportation routes, and forward-looking migration decisions. Our findings demonstrate that disregarding quality differences leads to a median bias of approximately 31% in estimating real wage growth rates …
(Trade) War And Peace: How To Impose International Trade Sanctions, Gustavo De Souza, Naiyuan Hu, Haishi Li, Yuan Mei
(Trade) War And Peace: How To Impose International Trade Sanctions, Gustavo De Souza, Naiyuan Hu, Haishi Li, Yuan Mei
Research Collection School Of Economics
What is the most cost-efficient way to impose trade sanctions against Russia? We build a quantitative model of international trade with input–output connections. Sanctioning countries choose import tariffs to simultaneously maximize their income and minimize Russia's income, with different weights placed on these objectives. We find, first, that for countries with low willingness to pay for sanctions against Russia, the most cost-efficient sanction is an approximately 20% tariff on all Russian products. Second, if countries are willing to pay at least US$0.70 for each US$1 drop in Russian welfare, an embargo on Russia's mining and energy products is the most …
The Interplay Of Interdependence And Correlation In Bilateral Trade, Takashi Kunimoto, Cuiling Zhang
The Interplay Of Interdependence And Correlation In Bilateral Trade, Takashi Kunimoto, Cuiling Zhang
Research Collection School Of Economics
Cremer and McLean (1988) show that the seller can extract full surplus almost always by an incentive compatible, individually rational mechanism in a single-unit auction model with a finite type space in which agents’ beliefs are correlated and their valuations can be interdependent. We first show that this paradoxically positive result can be extended to a model of bilateral trades. To make it more realistic, we investigate when ex-post efficiency and ex-post budget balance in bilateral trades can also be achieved by an incentive compatible, individually rational mechanism. We identify a necessary condition for the existence of such mechanisms and …
The Depth Of Preferential Trade Agreements, Pao-Li Chang, Wei Jin, Kefang Yao
The Depth Of Preferential Trade Agreements, Pao-Li Chang, Wei Jin, Kefang Yao
Research Collection School Of Economics
Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have increased rapidly in number since the 1990s, and have extended their traditional focus on tariff reduction to include deeper integration in policy areas such as competition policy, intellectual property rights, investments, and movement of capital. This paper uses a comprehensive dataset on the content of PTAs to quantify the impacts of the depth of trade agreements on bilateral trade flows and national welfare across the world for the period 1980–2015. The results indicate that agreements that are deeper (by different definitions) contribute to larger trade growth and welfare gains. Furthermore, the results imply that the …
Regulatory Protection And The Role Of International Cooperation, Yuan Mei
Regulatory Protection And The Role Of International Cooperation, Yuan Mei
Research Collection School Of Economics
I develop a general equilibrium framework to analyze the welfare consequences of product regulations and their international harmonization. In my model, raising product standards reduces a negative consumption externality, but also increases the marginal and fixed costs of production. When product standards are set noncooperatively, the effects of standards on other countries' wages and number of firms are not internalized, giving rise to an international inefficiency. The World Trade Organization's nondiscrimination principle of national treatment only partly addresses this inefficiency. Welfare losses from abandoning national treatment average 2.8%, whereas the maximum welfare gains from efficient cooperation average 11.8%.
Cross-Border Technology Investments In Recession, Juliana Yu Sun, Huanhuan Zheng
Cross-Border Technology Investments In Recession, Juliana Yu Sun, Huanhuan Zheng
Research Collection School Of Economics
Utilizing industry-level foreign direct investment (FDI) from 72 source markets to 122 destination markets between 2003 to 2018, we evaluate how cross-border technology investments respond to economic recessions. We find that FDI embedded with intensive research and development (R&D) drops when the destination market is in a recession and the source market is in a normal state and recovers to the pre-recession levels when both destination and source markets are in recession. However, there is little evidence that recessions affect cross-border investments in other aspects of technology measured by the penetration of robots, intellectual property products and information and communications …
Migration And Spatial Misallocation In China, Xiaolu Li, Lin Ma, Yang Tang
Migration And Spatial Misallocation In China, Xiaolu Li, Lin Ma, Yang Tang
Research Collection School Of Economics
We structurally estimate the firm-level frictions across prefectures in China and quantify their aggregate and distributional implications. Based on a general equi-librium model with input and output distortions and migration, we show that the firm-level frictions are less dispersed and less correlated with productivity in richer prefectures. Counterfactual exercises show that reducing the within-prefecture mis-allocation increases the aggregate welfare, discourages migration towards large cities, and narrows the spatial inequality. Moreover, internal migration alleviates the impacts of micro-frictions on aggregate welfare and worsens their impacts on spatial inequality.
Growth And Risk: A View From International Trade, Pravin Krishna, Andrei A. Levcheko, Lin Ma, William F. Maloney
Growth And Risk: A View From International Trade, Pravin Krishna, Andrei A. Levcheko, Lin Ma, William F. Maloney
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper studies the cross-country patterns of risky innovation and growth through the lens of international trade. We use a simple theoretical framework of risky quality upgrading by firms under varying levels of financial development to derive two predictions. First, the mean rate of quality growth and the corresponding cross-sectional variance of quality growth in a country are positively correlated. Second, both the mean and variance of quality changes are positively correlated with the country’s level of financial development. We then test these two hypotheses using data on disaggregated (HS10) bilateral exports to the United States. The patterns in the …
Disentangling The Effects Of Gatt/Wto On Variable And Fixed Trade Costs: Trade Status, Trade Margins, And Export Sales Distribution, Pao-Li Chang, Renjing Chen, Wei Jin
Disentangling The Effects Of Gatt/Wto On Variable And Fixed Trade Costs: Trade Status, Trade Margins, And Export Sales Distribution, Pao-Li Chang, Renjing Chen, Wei Jin
Research Collection School Of Economics
In this paper, we develop an estimation procedure to identify the partial (direct) effects of the GATT/WTO membership on the variable and the fixed trade cost, re-spectively. This extends the techniques of Anderson and Van Wincoop (2003) on the structural relationship of multilateral resistance terms and of Helpman, Melitz and Rubinstein (2008) on the structural modelling of trade incidence. We then develop a general equilibrium framework (that allows the presence of zero trade) to simulate the impact of variable, fixed, and total trade cost changes on the firm-level trade structure (including bilateral export productivity cutoff, weighted/unweighted extensive margin of export, …
Made In Singapore, Pao-Li Chang, Tran Bao Phuong Nguyen
Made In Singapore, Pao-Li Chang, Tran Bao Phuong Nguyen
Research Collection School Of Economics
In this paper, we characterize the position of Singapore in global value chains and identify Singapore’s key upstream and downstream trade partners. We trace how the position of Singapore in global value chains has changed in the past two decades: whether it has moved upstream or downstream, how involved it is in global value chains, how its trend compares with the other major Asian exporters (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong), and which key sectors of Singapore play a major role in these global trade networks.
Good Names Beget Favors: The Impact Of Country Image On Trade Flows And Welfare, Pao-Li Chang, Tomoki Fujii, Wei Jin
Good Names Beget Favors: The Impact Of Country Image On Trade Flows And Welfare, Pao-Li Chang, Tomoki Fujii, Wei Jin
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper estimates the effects of time-varying consumer preference bias on trade flows and welfare. We use a unique data set from the BBC World Service Poll, which surveys (annually during 2005–2017 with some gaps) the populations of a wide array of countries on their views of whether an evaluated country is having a mainly positive or negative influence in the world. We identify the effects on consumer preference parameters due to shifts in these country image perceptions and quantify their general equilibrium effects on bilateral exports and welfare (each time for an evaluated exporting country, holding the exporting country’s …
Labor Market Implications Of Taiwan’S Accession To The Wto: A Dynamic Quantitative Analysis, Pao-Li Chang, Yi-Fan Chen, Wen-Tai Hsu, Xin Yi
Labor Market Implications Of Taiwan’S Accession To The Wto: A Dynamic Quantitative Analysis, Pao-Li Chang, Yi-Fan Chen, Wen-Tai Hsu, Xin Yi
Research Collection School Of Economics
We study the effects of Taiwan’s accession to the WTO in 2002 on the labor market dynamics in Taiwan during 1995–2020. Based on the dynamic hat algebra of Caliendo, Dvorkin and Parro (2019), we modify the framework to allow for differently skilled labor inputs (low, middle, high) and sector-skill dynamic choice by workers. We map the model to the labor-market transition data in Taiwan (based on quasi-longitudinal household surveys), the country-sector-specific skill shares in production, and the bi-lateral trade flows and import tariffs, for 61 economies and 22 sectors for the period 1995–2007. We study the counterfactual dynamics if the …
What, Why And How Financial Development Matters: Evidence Of Asean-5, Asia-5 And Oecd-7 Economies, Swee Liang Tan
What, Why And How Financial Development Matters: Evidence Of Asean-5, Asia-5 And Oecd-7 Economies, Swee Liang Tan
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper analyzed the association between bank and capital markets financial development with income per capita in three regions; ASEAN-5 economies (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia), Asia-5 (Japan, China, Hong Kong SAR, South Korea, and India), and OECD-7 (Australia, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, UK, and US) from 2000 to 2017 using panel data regressions. A key lesson ASEAN-5 can learn from Asia-5 and OECD-7 experience is that bank size does matter despite digital disruptions to their banking system; yet large financial structure that favors banks is negatively associated with Asia-5, and importantly, efficient banking system (not bank size alone) is …
Labor Market Participation, Income Distribution, And Welfare Gains From Trade, Pao-Li Chang, Yi-Fan Chen, Wen-Tai Hsu
Labor Market Participation, Income Distribution, And Welfare Gains From Trade, Pao-Li Chang, Yi-Fan Chen, Wen-Tai Hsu
Research Collection School Of Economics
We develop a general equilibrium trade model where households with skill heterogeneity choose between home production and working on the labor market. Unlike most of the trade literature, the labor supply is elastic and is heterogeneous across households. As a result, trade affects labor participation, income, and welfare differently across households. We show that, when market goods and home goods are substitutes, households with lower skill levels expe-rience higher proportional increase to their income, while households with higher skill levels experience higher proportional increase in welfare. We further show that elastic labor supply preserves the extensive margin of welfare gains …
The Gatt/Wto Welfare Effects: 1950–2015, Pao-Li Chang, Wei Jin, Kefang Yao
The Gatt/Wto Welfare Effects: 1950–2015, Pao-Li Chang, Wei Jin, Kefang Yao
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper evaluates the welfare effects of GATT/WTO-induced reductions in tariffs, vari-able and fixed trade costs, based on identified direct effects of membership indicators on trade flows via nonparametric matching estimations. The identification does not require the use of tariff data, which permits a comprehensive evaluation of the welfare impact of GATT/WTO for a long panel since its inception (1950–2015) of as many as 180 economies. The results indicate substantial (but highly dispersed) welfare gains across members of different development stages and increasing welfare losses of nonmembers in later decades by staying outside the system. An extensive set of robustness …
Tapping On Growth Opportunities Through Trade And Investment, Andy Feng, Gerald Foong, Geraldine Lim
Tapping On Growth Opportunities Through Trade And Investment, Andy Feng, Gerald Foong, Geraldine Lim
Research Collection School Of Economics
As a small and open economy, external developments play a crucial role in shaping Singapore’s growth prospects. In particular, external demand is pivotal in supporting the growth of Singapore’s gross domestic product (GDP) beyond the limits afforded by a small domestic market. Furthermore, due to the resource constraints faced by Singapore, its production of goods and services to meet both external and domestic demand requires a substantial use of imported inputs. Apart from trade, Singapore’s openness and outward-orientation also extend to its embrace of inward and outward investments to grow its economy and create jobs for Singaporeans. In view of …
Singapore In The Global Value Chains, Pao-Li Chang, Tran Bao Phuong Nguyen
Singapore In The Global Value Chains, Pao-Li Chang, Tran Bao Phuong Nguyen
Research Collection School Of Economics
This chapter analyses the participation of Singapore in the global value chains (GVC): how much of its gross exports are GVC-related trade; how downstream it is; and which countries are its key upstream and downstream trade partners. The analysis is carried out both at the country aggregate level and at the sector level. New formulas are proposed in the gross export decomposition framework of Koopman, Wang and Wei (2014) and Borin and Mancini (2017), to characterise a country/industry’s downstreamness in the GVC and the importance of each trade partner in its backward/forward linkages. Singapore started off with a very high …
Financing Singapore’S Smes And The Crowdfunding Industry In Singapore, Swee Liang Tan, Yoke Wang Tok, Chansriniyom Thitipat
Financing Singapore’S Smes And The Crowdfunding Industry In Singapore, Swee Liang Tan, Yoke Wang Tok, Chansriniyom Thitipat
Research Collection School Of Economics
As new digital technologies emerge that make the provision of financial services more efficient, they hold the potential to address barriers that SMEs face in accessing credit. This paper finds empirical evidence that crowdfunding for SMEs improved SMEs’ timeliness to pay debt in Singapore. Anecdotal evidence from growing SMEs suggests that getting crowdfunding loans also induced financing from banks, leading to more efficient allocation of credit. In just four years, Singapore’s crowdfunding volume has grown rapidly making it one of the top crowdfunding hubs in Southeast Asia in 2018. The rapid development of Singapore’s crowdfunding industry can be attributed to …
The Response Of The Chinese Economy To The U.S.-China Trade War: 2018-2019, Pao-Li Chang, Kefang Yao, Fan Zheng
The Response Of The Chinese Economy To The U.S.-China Trade War: 2018-2019, Pao-Li Chang, Kefang Yao, Fan Zheng
Research Collection School Of Economics
In this paper, we follow the micro-to-macro approach of Fajgelbaum et al. (2020) and analyze the impacts of the 2018–2019 U.S.-China trade war on the Chinese economy. We use highly disaggregated trade and tariff data with monthly frequency to identify the demand/supply elasticities of Chinese imports/exports, combined with a general equilibrium model for the Chinese economy (that takes into account input-output linkages, and regional heterogeneity in employment and sector specialization) to quantify the partial and general equilibrium effects of the tariff war at the product/sector/region/aggregate levels. This complements the studies that focus on the ex post response of the U.S. …
Informal Institutions And Comparative Advantage Of South-Based Mnes: Theory And Evidence, Pao-Li Chang, Yuting Chen
Informal Institutions And Comparative Advantage Of South-Based Mnes: Theory And Evidence, Pao-Li Chang, Yuting Chen
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper builds a theory based on “informal institutions” to characterize the comparative advantage of South-based MNEs. MNEs headquartered in countries with poorer state institutions are shown to endogenously invest more in firm-specific institutional capital to compensate for the lack of state institutions, and as an optimal response, undertake FDI in countries with weaker institutions. We conduct an extensive test of the theory using worldwide firm-level greenfield FDI flows during 2009–2016, employing (among others) variations in the interaction of prevalence of informal institutions at home and state institutional qualities of host countries, as well as heterogeneity across sectors and firms …
Mandarins Make Markets: Leadership Rotations And Inter-Provincial Trade In China, Junyan Jiang, Yuan Mei
Mandarins Make Markets: Leadership Rotations And Inter-Provincial Trade In China, Junyan Jiang, Yuan Mei
Research Collection School Of Economics
The careers of many public officials span multiple localities, yet the economic effects of their inter-regional movements are not well understood. This paper focuses on the rotation of provincial leaders in China and studies its impact on regional economic integration. Estimation results using the gravity framework indicate that when a provincial leader is appointed as the party secretary of a new province, the trade volume from the new province to the old province increases, but not vice versa. Additional analyses using two novel datasets that capture the intensity of inter-provincial socioeconomic activities in China corroborate this finding. We then construct …
A Ricardian Rationale For The Wto Rules On R&D Subsidies, Yumi Koh, Gea M. Lee
A Ricardian Rationale For The Wto Rules On R&D Subsidies, Yumi Koh, Gea M. Lee
Research Collection School Of Economics
The WTO subsidy rules use two key criteria, specificity and adverse effects, to regulate R&D subsidies. Using the model of Dornbusch et al. (1977), we offer a Ricardian rationale for the regulatory criteria.
The Potential Impacts Of Covid-19 On The Global Value Chains: Gvc Positioning And Linkages, Gerald Foong, Pao-Li Chang
The Potential Impacts Of Covid-19 On The Global Value Chains: Gvc Positioning And Linkages, Gerald Foong, Pao-Li Chang
Research Collection School Of Economics
Apart from the public health crisis entailed by the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, it has also propagated a pandemic-induced economic shock globally. One transmission channel is via the inter-country linkages arising from the trade in intermediate inputs, which is a pertinent characteristic of global value chains (GVCs), and resulting in a "supply-chain contagion" as termed by Baldwin and Tomiura (2020). In this paper, we propose measures of bilteral downstreamness and upstreamness, the extent of a country's GVC participation, and the position of a country in GVCs by leveraging upon the gross export decomposition framework as laid out by Borin …
Between Lives And Economy: Optimal Covid-19 Containment Policy In Open Economies, Wen-Tai Hsu, Hsuan-Chih Luke Lin, Yang Han
Between Lives And Economy: Optimal Covid-19 Containment Policy In Open Economies, Wen-Tai Hsu, Hsuan-Chih Luke Lin, Yang Han
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper studies optimal containment policy for combating a pandemic in an open-economy context. It does so via quantitative analyses using a model that incorporates a standard epidemiological compartmental model in a multi-country, multi-sector Ricardian model of international trade with full-fledged input-output linkages. We devise a novel approach in computing optimal national policies in the long run, and contrast these policies with a baseline in which countries maintain their current policies until vaccine availability. The welfare gains under optimal policies are asymmetric as the gains for the set of countries which should tighten up the containment measures are much larger …
The Optimal Degree Of Reciprocity In Tariff Reduction, Pao-Li Chang
The Optimal Degree Of Reciprocity In Tariff Reduction, Pao-Li Chang
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper characterizes the optimal reciprocal trade policy in the environment of Melitz (2003) with firm productivity heterogeneity. In particular, without making parametric assumptions on firm productivity distribution, this paper derives the optimal degree of reciprocal tariff reductions that maximize the world welfare. A reciprocal import subsidy raises the industry productivity, lowering aggregate price; a reciprocal import tariff helps correct the markup distortion, increasing nominal income. With all the conflicting effects of import tariffs on welfare considered, the optimal degree of reciprocity in multilateral tariff reduction is shown to be free trade.
The Optimal Degree Of Reciprocity In Tariff Reduction, Pao-Li Chang
The Optimal Degree Of Reciprocity In Tariff Reduction, Pao-Li Chang
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper characterizes the optimal reciprocal trade policy in the environment of Melitz (2003) with firm productivity heterogeneity. With all the conflicting effects of import tariffs on welfare considered, the optimal degree of reciprocity in multilateral tariff reduction is shown to be free trade.
Globalization And Top Income Shares, Lin Ma, Dimitrije Ruzic
Globalization And Top Income Shares, Lin Ma, Dimitrije Ruzic
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper documents empirically that access to global markets is associated with a higher executive-to-worker pay ratio within the firm. It then uses China's 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization as a trade shock to show that firms that exported to China prior to 2001 subsequently exported more, grew larger, and grew more unequal in terms of executive-to-worker pay. To evaluate analytically and quantitatively the impacts of globalization on top income inequality, this paper builds a model with heterogeneous firms, occupational choice, and executive compensation. In the model, executive compensation grows with the size of the firm, while the …
Efficiency, Quality Of Forecasts And Radner Equilibria, Shurojit Chatterji, Atsushi Kajii
Efficiency, Quality Of Forecasts And Radner Equilibria, Shurojit Chatterji, Atsushi Kajii
Research Collection School Of Economics
We study a simple two period economy with no uncertainty and complete markets where agents trade based on forecasts about the second period spot price. We propose as our solution concept a set of forecasts with the following properties: there exist (heterogenous) forecasts contained in this set that lead to efficient allocations, the set contains only those forecasts that correspond to some efficient equilibrium, and Önally that the forecasts assign positive probability to the actual market clearing spot price. We call such a set of prices an efficient equilibrium with ambiguity, and interpret it as a generalization of Radner equilibrium …
Cross-Border Technology Investments In Recessions, Juliana Yu Sun, Huanhuan Zheng
Cross-Border Technology Investments In Recessions, Juliana Yu Sun, Huanhuan Zheng
Research Collection School Of Economics
Utilizing industry-level foreign direct investment (FDI) from 72 source markets to 122 destination markets between 2003 to 2018, we apply a differences-in-differences approach to evaluate the response of technology FDI to recessions. We find that research and development (R&D) intensive FDI drops when the destination market is in recession and the source market is in a normal state, and recovers to the pre-recession levels when both destination and source markets are in recession. The result is particularly pronounced in deep and long recessions, during the propagation stage of recessions, and in destination markets with stronger intellectual property protection, looser FDI …