Review of World Economics

Kohl, Tristan

doi: 10.1007/s10290-014-0188-3pmid: N/A

This study surveys the empirical literature in which the gravity equation has been used to study the effect of economic integration agreements (EIAs) on international trade flows. We show that most studies either focus on improving the methodology to assess regionalism’s overall impact, or on a small set of well-known agreements without necessarily adopting new methodological improvements. We bridge this gap by providing individual estimates for EIAs on world trade, while employing first-differencing techniques to correct for endogeneity bias and account for phase-in effects. Overall, EIAs promote trade by at most 50 %. Surprisingly, more than half of the EIAs investigated have had no discernible impact on trade at all, while only about one quarter of the agreements are trade promoting. Characteristics of these agreements, such as their institutional quality, design, and their members’ involvement in the World Trade Organisation, shed more light on how this variation can be understood.

Haller, Stefanie; Damijan, Jože; Kaitila, Ville; Kostevc, Črt; Maliranta, Mika; Milet, Emmanuel; Mirza, Daniel; Rojec, Matija

doi: 10.1007/s10290-014-0190-9pmid: N/A

We establish a set of stylised facts for trade and trading firms in five market services sectors using comparable firm- and activity-level data from four EU countries. Our analysis shows that exports account for much lower shares of overall sales in the services sectors than in manufacturing. This is because fewer firms are engaged in trade in the services sectors and also because within particular sectors firms trade a lower share of their sales on average. Services producers trade mostly goods, but in terms of value, trade in services is much more important to them than to manufacturers. Larger and more productive firms are more likely to be two-way traders and to engage in both goods and services trade. Trade by services firms is somewhat less dominated by firms that both export and import than trade by manufacturing firms. Few firms export many services or to many countries. The value of services exports is increasing in the number of markets served but not necessarily in the number of services traded.

Cirera, Xavier

doi: 10.1007/s10290-014-0186-5pmid: N/A

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) aim at increasing trade flows via the incentives created by preference margins; this is the difference between the preferential tariff and the tariff of the main competitors. However, an additional impact that is often omitted in PTAs evaluations is the possibility that the wedge between preferential and most favoured nation (MFN) tariffs may induce a preference rent that translates into larger prices for preferential exporters. This paper analyses empirically whether preferential exporters capture this preference rent using a unique dataset of imports in the European Union at a highly disaggregated level linked to information on the preferential regime used and the tariff applied. Our main findings suggest that on average an exporter obtains a larger price margin under a preferential regime than under MFN. However, this preference rent is only partially appropriated by exporters with a pass-through coefficient from preference to price margins that oscillates between 0.17 and 0.8, depending on the size of the margin and the type of product.

Bénassy-Quéré, Agnès; Coulibaly, Dramane

doi: 10.1007/s10290-014-0185-6pmid: N/A

We study the contribution of market regulations to the dynamics of the real exchange rate within the European Union. Based on a model proposed by De Gregorio et al. (Rev Int Econ 2(3):284–305, 1994a), we show that both product market regulations in nontradable sectors and employment protection tend to raise the real exchange rate. We then carry out an econometric estimation for European countries for 1985–2006 to quantify the contributions of the pure Balassa–Samuelson effect and those of market regulations on real exchange-rate variations. Based on this evidence and on a counter-factual experiment, we conclude that the relative evolutions of product market regulations and employment protection across countries play a very significant role for real exchange-rate variations within the European Union and especially within the euro area, through their impacts on the relative price of nontradable goods.

Bratti, Massimiliano; Benedictis, Luca; Santoni, Gianluca

doi: 10.1007/s10290-014-0191-8pmid: N/A

This paper investigates the causal effect of immigration on trade flows using Italian panel data at the province level. We exploit the exceptional characteristics of the Italian data (the fine geographical disaggregation, the very high number of countries of origin of immigrants, the high heterogeneity of social and economic characteristics of Italian provinces, and the absence of cultural or historical ties with the countries where immigrants come from) coupled with the use of a wide set of fixed effects and an ‘instrument’ based on immigrants’ enclaves. We find that immigrants have a significant positive effect on both exports and imports, but much larger for the latter. The pro-trade effects of immigrants tend to decline in space, and even turn negative when large ethnic communities are located too far away from a specific province (via a trade-diversion effect). Moreover, while our data show inter-ethnic spillovers for exports, we find no evidence that networks between different ethnicities affect provinces’ imports. Finally, we provide evidence of a substantial heterogeneity in the effects of immigrants: the impact on trade tends to be larger for immigrants coming from low-income countries, for earlier waves of immigrants, and for least advanced provinces (Southern Italy).

Kucera, David; Principi, Marco

doi: 10.1007/s10290-013-0183-0pmid: N/A

Theories of multinational enterprises emphasize that foreign direct investment (FDI) is undertaken in different industries for different reasons, yet studies of the effects of democracy on FDI most commonly use aggregate-level FDI data. This paper evaluates US FDI outflows to 15 industries (eight manufacturing, seven nonmanufacturing) in 54 countries in a linear dynamic panel-data gravity FDI model using a “system” generalized method of moments estimator and three widely used democracy indicators. At the aggregate-level, we estimate a positive effect of democracy on FDI, consistent with most prior studies. At the industry level, we estimate larger positive effects of democracy on FDI for service than manufacturing industries, particularly for finance and insurance and information, and negative effects for mining and oil and gas extraction.

Wagner, Laurent

doi: 10.1007/s10290-014-0187-4pmid: N/A

In this paper, the author focuses on the nonlinear nature of the aid to growth relationship to show that the “Big Push” hypothesis is consistent with capacity constraints in the understanding of aid effectiveness. The Big Push hypothesis proposes the existence of one threshold below which aid is not effective, whereas the constraints inferred by the concept of absorptive capacity suggest the existence of a second threshold above which aid is no longer effective. This paper addresses the issue of these thresholds which characterize the aid to growth relationship. Using a semi-parametric econometric method, the author finds that aid becomes effective only above a critical level, but what is more it becomes detrimental to growth at high aid flows. The author also investigates how the quality of institutions and economic vulnerability modify the level of these two thresholds. He finds that economic vulnerability is a key factor conditioning aid effectiveness.