World Bank Policy Research Working Papers
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Опубликовано на портале: 16-12-2003
Alexander Yeats, Francis Ng
World Bank Policy Research Working Papers.
2003.
No. 3085.
World Bank demographic and country characteristic statistics identify 16 small landlocked
countries that are similar to Lesotho. Ng and Yeats attempt to determine what useful
policy information can be derived from the recent trade performance of these “comparators.”
Among questions they pose are whether the trade profiles of the comparators suggest
potentially promising export ventures for Lesotho, do they indicate directions for
a geographic diversification of trade, or do they suggest products in which Lesotho
might acquire a comparative advantage. The authors also use U.S. partner country
statistics to evaluate Lesotho’s export performance in this major market.
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The U.S. data indicate Lesotho lost competitive export shares for about three-quarters
of its major clothing products during the late 1990s. The data show these losses
were primarily to the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) countries in the
Caribbean. Lesotho was competing on basically equal terms and did not fare well.
But it is generally held that the most efficient clothing exporters are in the Far
East and not Latin America. Lesotho’s difficulties in competing with the latter
have worrisome implications for its ability to compete with East Asian exporters
when the Multifiber Arrangement is phased out.
The comparative advantage profiles of the landlocked comparator countries suggest
Lesotho’s options for a greatly needed export diversification may be wider
than is assumed. One or more of the comparator countries developed a comparative
advantage in 110 four-digit SITC (non-clothing) manufactures which are generally
labor-intensive in production. Many of these goods should also be suitable for production
and export by Lesotho.
International production sharing often involves the importation and further assembly
of components in developing countries. This activity can significantly broaden the
range of new products in which a country can diversify. Statistics show many landlocked
comparator countries have moved into component assembly operations, and it appears
this activity could contribute to Lesotho’s export diversification and industrialization.
But the quality problems associated with Lesotho’s trade statistics makes it
impossible to determine the extent to which local production sharing is occurring.
A special effort is needed to tabulate reliable statistics on Lesotho’s current
involvement in this activity.
Finally, the authors attempt to determine how the commercial policy environment in
Lesotho compares with that in other countries. Policymakers previously had difficulty
in addressing this issue, but several recent efforts to compile comprehensive cross-country
indices of the quality of governance and commercial policies now provide relevant
information. These statistics suggest domestic commercial policies make Lesotho relatively
less attractive to foreign investment than many other developing countries. Less
than 20 percent of all Latin American countries have a domestic commercial environment
judged to be inferior to that in Lesotho, while the corresponding share for East
Asia is under 30 percent. Overall, almost 70 percent of all developing countries
appear to pursue commercial policies that make them as, or more, attractive to foreign
investment than Lesotho.
Опубликовано на портале: 16-12-2003
Carsten Fink, Beata Smarzynska, Mariana Spatareanu
World Bank Policy Research Working Papers.
2003.
No. 3150.
Economists have long recognized that richer countries trade more among themselves
than with poorer economies due to a closer match of exporter supply structures and
importer preferences. In the literature, the closeness of supply and demand has traditionally
been determined by the quality of products—as expressed in the so-called Linder
hypothesis. This paper examines an extension of the Linder hypothesis by also considering
the extent of horizontal product differentiation as another determinant of the closeness
of supply and demand. The empirical analysis employs information on international
trademark registrations to test whether richer countries import more from countries
whose exports are of higher quality and exhibit a greater degree of product differentiation.
The results lend support to the hypothesis in most consumer goods sectors but not
in intermediate goods sectors.
Опубликовано на портале: 16-12-2003
Jacques Morisset, Alejandro Izquierdo, Marcelo Olarreaga
World Bank Policy Research Working Papers.
2003.
No. 3032.
Globalization has been a persistent phenomenon of the post-war period. The gross
volume of cross-border capital flows has grown at an average of 25 percent a year,
and trade in goods and services has also increased, albeit not as dramatically, but
at least twice as fast as world GDP over the past 20 years. Yet, consumers and investors
continue to spend and hold a disproportionate share of their assets in local markets—the
so-called home-bias has been emphasized by many recent empirical studies. For many
researchers, this home bias reflects information asymmetries and the fact that acquiring
information across international borders is relatively costly.
The main objective of the authors is to identify channels through which information
gets disseminated across international markets. They consider three potential channels
through which information can affect import and foreign equity purchase decisions
in 14 OECD countries. The first channel consists of information spillovers from the
commercial to the financial markets and vice-versa. Financial investors and importers
share common information, which is also frequently conveyed to them by the same source—banks
or financial intermediaries. The second and third channels emphasize seller and buyer
reputations in international markets. The seller reputation channel stresses the
importance given by, for example, importers in the United States who are considering
buying products from Italy to the experience that Canadian and Japanese importers
may have accumulated on Italian exporters. The buyer reputation channel examines
to what extent a foreign investor or trader seeks information on the reliability
of the foreign buyer by assessing his reputation in other countries. While the last
two channels are equally important in explaining bilateral import flows, buyer reputation
appears to be of greater importance for equity flows in the sample.
The authors argue that these three channels may help provide some insights about
the recent episodes of contagion across markets and countries that occurred over
the past decade. These information channels can create virtuous or vicious circles
that may, in turn, lead to unexpected changes in investors’ and traders’
behaviors across markets.
Опубликовано на портале: 16-12-2003
Paul Brenton
World Bank Policy Research Working Papers.
2003.
No. 3018.
Trade preferences are a key element in industrial countries’ efforts to assist
the integration of least developed countries (LDCs) into the world economy. Brenton
provides an initial evaluation of the impact of the European Union’s recently
introduced “Everything but Arms” (EBA) initiative on the products currently
exported by the LDCs. He shows that the changes introduced by the EBA initiative
in 2001 are relatively minor for currently exported products, primarily because over
99 percent of EU imports from the LDCs are in products which the EU had already liberalized,
and the complete removal of barriers to the key remaining products—rice, sugar,
and bananas—has been delayed. Brenton looks at the role EU preferences to LDCs
in general have been playing and could play in assisting the integration of the LDCs.
He shows that there is considerable variation across countries in the potential impact
that EU preferences can have given current export structures. There is a group of
LDCs for whom EU trade preferences on existing exports are not significant since
these exports are mainly of products where the most-favored-nation duty is zero.
Export diversification is the key issue for these countries. For other LDCs, EU preferences
have the potential to provide a more substantial impact on trade. However, the author
shows that only 50 percent of EU imports from non-ACP (Africa, Caribbean, and Pacific)
LDCs which are eligible actually request preferential access to the EU. The prime
suspect for this low level of use are the rules of origin, both the restrictiveness
of the requirements on sufficient processing and the costs and difficulties of providing
the necessary documentation. More simple rules of origin are likely to enhance the
impact of EU trade preferences in terms of improving market access and in stimulating
diversification toward a broader range of exports.
Major Trade Trends in East Asia: What are their Implications for Regional Cooperation
and Growth? [статья]
Опубликовано на портале: 16-12-2003
Alexander Yeats, Francis Ng
World Bank Policy Research Working Papers.
2003.
No. 3084.
This study’s empirical findings have positive implications for further efforts
to expand East Asian regional trade and cooperation initiatives. Since the mid-1980s
regional intra-trade has grown at a rate roughly double that of world trade, and
at a rate far higher than the intra-trade of the North America Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) member countries or the European Union. Evidence based on intra-industry
trade ratios or statistics on international production sharing show economic linkages
and the interdependence of East Asian economies have considerably strengthened over
the past two decades. On a global scale, East Asia (excluding Japan) now originates
19 percent of world trade, which is approximately the same share as the NAFTA member
countries.
Regional Integration and Technology Diffusion: The Case of the North America Free
Trade Agreement [статья]
Опубликовано на портале: 16-12-2003
Yanling Wang, Maurice Schiff
World Bank Policy Research Working Papers.
2003.
No. 3132.
The literature on regional integration agreements (RIAs) is vast and deals with political,
economic, and political economy issues. The literature on the economics of RIAs deals
mostly with static effects, and concludes that these effects are, in general, ambiguous.
So far there has been no empirical analysis of the dynamic effects of RIAs based
on their impact on technology diffusion from partner and nonpartner countries. Schiff
and Wang's paper is a first attempt in this direction. The authors examine the impact
of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on total factor productivity in
Mexico through its impact on trade-related technology transfers from OECD countries.
They estimate trade-related technology diffusion by using a measure of trade-related
foreign research and development (R&D). Foreign R&D is constructed based on industry-specific
R&D in the OECD, OECD-Mexico trade patterns, and input-output relations in Mexico.
The authors find that: (i) Mexico’s trade with its NAFTA partners had a large
and significant impact on Mexico’s total factor productivity, while trade with
the rest of the OECD did not. (ii) Simulating the impact of NAFTA has led to a permanent
increase in total factor productivity in Mexico’s manufacturing sector of between
5.5 percent and 7.5 percent and to some convergence with the economies of Canada
and the United States.
Опубликовано на портале: 16-12-2003
Julio J. Nogués
World Bank Policy Research Working Papers.
2003.
No. 3088.
On December 10, 2001 the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) imposed steep antidumping
duties against honey imports from Argentina and China ranging from 32.6 percent to
183.8 percent, and a countervailing duty against Argentina of 5.9 percent. A previous
antidumping investigation in 1995 ended with a suspension “agreement”
that curtailed U.S. imports from China by around 30 percent. Millions of beekeepers
around the world, most of them poor, make a living from honey production, and a free
and competitive world market would help raise their standards of living. Nevertheless,
the sequential pattern of increasing and widening protectionism followed by the United
States, the world’s top importer, to include successful exporters under the
effects of its contingent protection measures sends a clear message that other countries
should think twice before investing in expanding honey exports to the United States.
In addition to looking into the trade effects of these contingent protection measures,
Nogués concludes that under the regulatory arrangements of the DOC, Argentina’s
beekeepers never had a chance of defending themselves. For example, responding to
the DOC’s lengthy and sophisticated questionnaires that sought to determine
cost of production went beyond the capacities of poor beekeepers. In the absence
of information, the DOC resorted to evidence presented by the petitioners which was
riddled with errors. The available evidence suggests that had beekeepers been capable
of responding to the questionnaires, the margin of dumping would had been lower,
if at all existent. This and other evidence discussed by Nogués suggest the
urgent need to introduce reforms into the World Trade Organization antidumping and
subsidy agreements. At the minimum what is required is a consensus that all respondents
be given the same opportunity by the international trade rules. The author argues
that at present this is not the case and offers suggestions for reforms.
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