scholarly journals Patterns of Export Diversification: Evidence from Pakistan

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (Special Edition) ◽  
pp. 307-326
Author(s):  
Hamna Ahmed ◽  
Naved Hamid

This paper examines historical trends in the diversification of exports in Pakistan, using the Hirschman index to quantify the degree of export diversification. We analyze the structure of exports through the lens of ‘traditionality,’ for which we construct industry-specific, average cumulative export experience functions, i.e., a traditionality index of all 2-digit export industries in Pakistan from 1972 to 2012. This is useful in distinguishing between traditional and nontraditional export industries. We also study the degree of structural change in the export sector since 1972 by recalculating the traditionality index based on five-year interval periods. The cross-industry variance of this index is then used to calculate the structural change index. Periods for which the index values are low are interpreted as periods during which the export industries experienced uniform patterns of export growth (and thereby no structural change). Periods for which the index values are high are interpreted as periods during which the export industries experienced varied patterns of growth, thus undergoing structural change. Finally, we explore the determinants of structural change in exports by looking at variables such as GDP growth, export growth, the real exchange rate, the growth rate of world trade, trade liberalization, and the degree of product concentration in the country’s export base.

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 221-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fumitaka Furuoka ◽  
Hanafiah Harvey ◽  
Qaiser Munir

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-261
Author(s):  
K. J. Joseph ◽  
Liyan Zhang ◽  
Kiran Kumar Kakarlapudi

This article tends to suggest that the strategy of embracing globalization has been helpful in raising GDP growth in China and India. The higher growth record also coincided with increasing income inequality, wealth inequality and regional inequality. While China seems to have made some success in making a turnaround in inequality, in India inequalities are on the rise. The present study attributes the observed trend to the nature of structural change and the resultant employment generation in terms of both its quantity and its quality. FDI and trade under globalization also worked towards increasing inequalities. The key issue is why globalization as implemented in India failed to generate employment unlike what happened in China. India seems to have been not adequately successful in globalizing at ‘our terms and at our own pace’, whereas China has been able to successfully manage its transition to the global market, which in turn, at least partly, explains the observed differences in the trend in growth and inequality in these two countries. At the same time, while there have been targeted and effective policy measures in China to address inequalities, in India, such policies are yet to show up their results.


2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-168
Author(s):  
Yinan Liu

Abstract As the importance of tariffs in international trade has declined with the reduction of tariff rates under the GATT/WTO programs of multilateral trade liberalization, most governments prefer to protect domestic industries from foreign competitors through a variety of non-tariff barriers. Antidumping actions have recently become the world's biggest trade impediment due to their specific features and the antidumping activity of new users. Since China has become the major engine of world trade growth in recent years, it also has become the largest anti-dumping target in the world. However, the present world competition situation implies that world trade liberalization might arouse regional trade friction. The objective of this research is to identify whether China's WTO accession changed China's situation with regard to EU antidumping actions. The research analysis empirically proved that trade liberalization could partly affect the EU's antidumping actions against Chinese exports and the higher degree of industrial concentricity becomes a motive to increase the EU's antidumping activities against China.


2010 ◽  
Vol 109 (730) ◽  
pp. 355-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey J. Schott

The World Trade Organization is in disrepair. To fix it, and thereby boost global trade liberalization, nations must first successfully conclude the Doha Round of talks.


Author(s):  
Stefan Tangermann

In the WTO's Doha Round, agriculture is again at center stage, even though it accounts for no more than a small and declining share of world trade. The Agreement on Agriculture concluded in the Uruguay Round was a huge step forward in the GATT's dealings with agriculture. But more needs to be done. In recent years, agricultural support in several developing countries has increased while developed countries have reformed their farm policies and improved market orientation. One specific problem in the Doha Round negotiations on agriculture is the treatment of public stockholding for food security purposes. A possible solution could come through an amendment of the rules for measuring domestic support, by agreeing that procurement prices below prices prevailing on international markets are not considered "administered prices".


Author(s):  
Michael Landesmann ◽  
Neil Foster-McGregor

Trade and the integration of countries into the global economy is one of the main forces shaping the structural composition of economies, an effect which in turn is expected to impact upon productivity and growth. Structural change can be restrained or reinforced by international trade. This chapter reviews the theory on the relationship between trade and trade liberalization and both structural change and growth, from the contributions of Adam Smith to the more recent new new trade theory beginning with the work of Melitz. The chapter further discusses the existing empirical evidence on the relationship between trade and structural change, before concluding by presenting evidence on the impact of trade liberalization on productivity growth for a broad sample of countries, further decomposing the effect into an effect due to structural change and an effect due to within sector productivity developments.


Author(s):  
Priyaranjan Jha

Traditional trade theory has focused on the allocation of resources between various sectors of the economy and how it changes in response to trade liberalization while maintaining the assumption of free mobility of resources across sectors within an economy. This simplifying assumption is at odds with empirical evidence which shows considerable frictions in the movement of resources between sectors, at least in the short to medium run. Workers who lose their jobs in the import competing sector may find it hard to find a job immediately in the export sector. This has given rise to a growing literature that incorporates frictions in the mobility of factors of production in general, and labor in particular, in trade models. This article surveys the literature on trade and unemployment where unemployment is caused by search frictions or wage rigidity of some kind such as minimum wage, efficiency wage, or implicit contracts. While the focus is on unemployment, any model studying the impact of trade on labor markets features wage effects, too, and a brief discussion of wage effects is also provided. Trade affects unemployment in these multi-sector models through two main channels: sectoral unemployment rates and intersectoral reallocation of resources. In newer trade models with heterogeneous firms, trade can change unemployment by affecting the allocation of resources within a sector. While the theoretical models in this literature identify various channels through which trade liberalization affects unemployment, many of these channels have opposing implications for unemployment, rendering the net effect of trade liberalization on unemployment ambiguous in many settings. This has also given rise to an empirical literature studying the implications of trade liberalization on unemployment.


1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Slater

Fostering a strong export sector is essential for the kind of small, open economy like post-communist Czechoslovakia (latterly the Czech and Slovak Republics). The CSFR export sector has to a considerable extent the defied expectations, of many of the more pessimistic commentators in regard to the expansion of exports to the West, as many industries with a previously poor record on the EC market have attained very rapid growth rates of exports to that market. Nevertheless, the evidence of section 3 points to a weakening of the reorientation process in 1992, and raises questions about the future of many of the industries which formerly exported largely to the CMEA area. Whilst the overall level of exports has been largely maintained in the transition period, export growth to the West has not allowed most of the CMEA-oriented industries to maintain their shares in total exports.


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