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Full-Text Articles in International Economics

Dynamics Of High-Growth Young Firms And The Role Of Venture Capitalists, Yoshiki Ando Aug 2026

Dynamics Of High-Growth Young Firms And The Role Of Venture Capitalists, Yoshiki Ando

Research Collection School Of Economics

Motivated by the substantial growth and upfront investments of venture capital (VC)-backed firms observed in administrative US Census data, this study develops a life-cycle firm dynamics model. In the model, startups choose the source of financing from VC, angel investors, or banks, depending on their growth potential, and invest in innovation. The calibrated model explains the life-cycle dynamics of firms with different sources of financing and suggests that venture capitalists' managerial advice accounts for around 22% of the growth in VC-backed firms. A counterfactual economy without VC financing would experience an aggregate consumption loss of around 0.46%.


The Interplay Of Interdependence And Correlation In Bilateral Trade, Takashi Kunimoto, Cuiling Zhang Aug 2026

The Interplay Of Interdependence And Correlation In Bilateral Trade, Takashi Kunimoto, Cuiling Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Following Crémer and McLean (1985, 1988) for finite type spaces and McAfee and Reny (1992) for continuous ones, we establish two respective sufficient conditions for the existence of efficient, ex ante budget-balanced mechanisms satisfying Bayesian incentive compatibility (BIC) and interim individual rationality (IIR) in bilateral trade settings with interdependent values and correlated beliefs. We then utilize the ex ante welfare (EAW) condition proposed by Kunimoto and Zhang (2026), which is necessary for the stricter requirement of ex post budget balance. We prove that while the EAW condition is sufficient in a two-type model and generalizes existing conditions in the literature, …


The Smu Trade Dashboard: Tracking And Quantifying The Trump Ii Tariffs, Pao-Li Chang, Ruoqing Chen, Lin Ma Mar 2026

The Smu Trade Dashboard: Tracking And Quantifying The Trump Ii Tariffs, Pao-Li Chang, Ruoqing Chen, Lin Ma

Research Collection School Of Economics

The SMU Trade Dashboard (https://economics.smu.edu.sg/soetrade/tr ade-dashboard), developed by the SMU Center for Research on International Trade, consists of Tariff Tracker and Trade Simulation functions. The Tariff Tracker allows users to track the tariff applicable to an HS 6-digit product or an ISIC 2-digit sector bymarkets and country origins. The Trade Simulation presents quantitative simulation results of the effects of Trump II tariffs (and the associated tariff responses by its trading partners) on trade flows, welfare, and wages. This companion paper documents the methodologies underlying the tariff data collection protocol and the structuralsimulation designs.


Projecting Inflation Tail Risks In A Small Open Economy: Some Evidence From Singapore, Hwee Kwan Chow-Tan, Jordan Lee Feb 2026

Projecting Inflation Tail Risks In A Small Open Economy: Some Evidence From Singapore, Hwee Kwan Chow-Tan, Jordan Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

This study empirically assesses the drivers of risks to the inflation outlook for a small open economy like Singapore. We apply the inflation-at-risk framework of López-Salido and Loria (2020) and incorporate projections from the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) as point forecasts of inflation. Our findings show that macro-financial risk factors—shaped by Singapore’s openness, role as a financial hub, and exchange rate–centered monetary policy framework—enter nonlinearly into inflation risk models and exert differentiated effects. Foreign price pressures heighten upside risks, and exchange rate policy has proven effective at mitigating them. Tighter global financial conditions amplify inflation risks through cost-push channels, …


Efficient Bilateral Trade With Interdependent Values: The Use Of Two-Stage Mechanisms, Takashi Kunimoto, Cuiling Zhang Feb 2026

Efficient Bilateral Trade With Interdependent Values: The Use Of Two-Stage Mechanisms, Takashi Kunimoto, Cuiling Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Efficient, voluntary bilateral trades are generally not implementable in an interdependent values environment with two-sided asymmetric information. To obtain more positive results, we consider two-stage mechanisms in which (i) the outcome (e.g., allocation of the goods) is determined first; (ii) the agents partially learn the state via their own outcome-decision payoffs; and (iii) transfers are finally made. We propose the approximate shoot-the-liar (AS) mechanism and identify Assumption 1, under which “approximately” efficient, voluntary trades are implementable. We further illustrate the permissiveness of the assumption, and characterize it in terms of the nature of interdependence in valuation functions – delineating the …


The Aggregate Welfare And Trade Implications Of Contracting Frictions In Global Sourcing, Davin Chor, Lin Ma Jul 2025

The Aggregate Welfare And Trade Implications Of Contracting Frictions In Global Sourcing, Davin Chor, Lin Ma

Research Collection School Of Economics

How much do contracting frictions between global firms and their suppliers impact country welfare and trade? We answer this by developing a model of global sourcing under partial contractibility, where firm-supplier relationships are exposed to a bilateral holdup problem. Sourcing decisions aggregate into a gravity equation for trade flows by organizational mode (intrafirm vs. arm’s length), which we take to structural estimation. We can then evaluate welfare changes with an extended Arkolakis, Costinot and Rodriguez-Clare (2012) formula that incorporates these contracting frictions. Our counterfactual analysis reveals a sizeable average country welfare gain of 9.2% from eliminating contracting frictions in global …


The Impact Of Nafta On Prices And Competition: Evidence From Mexican Manufacturing Plants, Felipe Brugués, Ayumu Ken Kikkawa, Yuan Mei, Pablo Robles May 2025

The Impact Of Nafta On Prices And Competition: Evidence From Mexican Manufacturing Plants, Felipe Brugués, Ayumu Ken Kikkawa, Yuan Mei, Pablo Robles

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper assesses the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement on Mexican manufacturing plants’ output prices and markups. We distinguish between Mexican goods that are exported and those sold domestically, and decompose their prices separately into markups and marginal costs. We then analyze how these components were affected by the reductions in Mexican output tariffs, intermediate input tariffs, and U.S. tariffs on Mexican exports. We find that domestically sold products saw a decline in prices as Mexican plants faced more competition and gained access to cheaper inputs. Prices of exported goods fell only slightly as plants increased their …


(Trade) War And Peace: How To Impose International Trade Sanctions, Gustavo De Souza, Naiyuan Hu, Haishi Li, Yuan Mei Sep 2024

(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 …


Financial Crises, Bailouts And Monetary Policy In Open Economies, Yang Jiao Sep 2024

Financial Crises, Bailouts And Monetary Policy In Open Economies, Yang Jiao

Research Collection School Of Economics

I jointly study the optimal bailout policy and monetary policy in open economies that borrow in foreign currency from international lenders. A policy dilemma emerges during financial crises. Policymakers trade off the benefit of more bailouts alleviating firms’ financial constraints against the cost of larger currency devaluation, which tightens firms’ financial constraints. I embed the optimal bailout in an otherwise standard “sudden stop” model with nominal rigidities. The model sheds light on the role of bailouts and currency mismatch in driving the exchange rate dynamics, firms’ balance sheets and economic recovery. Quantitatively, the model matches key business cycle moments. A …


Trade Imbalance, Heavy Goods, And Pollution, Jungho Lee, Shang-Jin Wei, Jianhuan Xu Jun 2024

Trade Imbalance, Heavy Goods, And Pollution, Jungho Lee, Shang-Jin Wei, Jianhuan Xu

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose a new welfare effect of trade surplus. Guided by insight from several fields in economics, we provide evidence that an increase in a country's trade surplus alters the unit shipping costs for its trade and the composition of its imports in ways that induce more pollution in the country in equilibrium. This new form of welfare loss of trade imbalance has not been accounted for in the existing international economics literature


Regulatory Protection And The Role Of International Cooperation, Yuan Mei May 2024

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%.


The Balance Of Concessions In Trade Agreements, Mostafa Beshkar, Pao-Li Chang, Shenxi Song May 2024

The Balance Of Concessions In Trade Agreements, Mostafa Beshkar, Pao-Li Chang, Shenxi Song

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper introduces a quantitative framework to analyze the WTO’s reciprocity principle. Utilizing two polar bargaining environments, we measure terms-of-trade concessions among WTO members and examine how shifts in applied tariffs and economic fundamentals affect bilateral and multilateral balance of concessions. We find significant disparities in concessions, largely driven by the rise in trade imbalances since the early 1990s. Notably, although US-China bilateral tariffs suggest considerable terms-of-trade benefits for China, under a hypothetical balanced trade scenario, their relationship evolves towards near reciprocity following China’s accession to the WTO. Furthermore, in contrast to the significant gains in its relationship with the …


Migration And Resource Misallocation In China, Xiaolu Li, Lin Ma, Yang Tang Mar 2024

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 Long And Short-Run Spatial Impacts Of Trade, Lin Ma, Yunlong Song, Yang Tang Feb 2024

The Long And Short-Run Spatial Impacts Of Trade, Lin Ma, Yunlong Song, Yang Tang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We explore how the spatial impacts of trade evolve over time using a dynamic spatial model that incorporates capital accumulation and skill acquisition. We show that in the short run, the spatial impacts of trade mainly depend on the initial conditions, especially the endowments of physical and human capital across locations. However, in the long run, trade shocks shape the distribution of production factors across space through factor accumulation and migration, resulting in significantly different spatial impacts. In the context of China’s WTO accession, we find that international trade is seven times more effective in driving the population towards coastal …


Cross-Border Technology Investments In Recession, Juliana Yu Sun, Huanhuan Zheng Feb 2024

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 …


The Depth Of Preferential Trade Agreements, Pao-Li Chang, Wei Jin, Kefang Yao Dec 2023

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 …


Growth And Risk: A View From International Trade, Pravin Krishna, Andrei A. Levchenko, Lin Ma, William F. Maloney May 2023

Growth And Risk: A View From International Trade, Pravin Krishna, Andrei A. Levchenko, 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 …


Migration And Spatial Misallocation In China, Xiaolu Li, Lin Ma, Yang Tang Apr 2023

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 Jan 2023

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 …


Made In Singapore, Pao-Li Chang, Tran Bao Phuong Nguyen Oct 2022

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 Oct 2022

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 …


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 Oct 2022

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, …


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 Aug 2022

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 Jul 2022

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 May 2022

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 Apr 2022

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 Dec 2021

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 Sep 2021

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 Aug 2021

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 May 2021

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. …