The DNA of New Exporters: Spin-offs and FDI at the Extensive Margin of Trade

Other than that new exporters account for a large part of aggregate export growth, we know little else. We document that aggregate export growth in Chile is driven by only a few new exporters. These exporters are new business entities, operate new plants, and behave much like experienced exporters: they start large and have high survival rates. Moreover, 70 percent of these new firms are owned by existing businesses and are likely the by-product of either domestic spin-offs or foreign direct investment (24 percent). By focusing on the average new exporter, the existing models of new exporter dynamics miss these key features of export growth. (JEL F14, F23, L22, L60, M13, O14, O19)

The Effects of Political Institutions on the Extensive and Intensive Margins of Trade

We present a model of political networks that integrates both the choice of trade partners (the extensive margin) and trade volumes (the intensive margin). Our model predicts that regimes secure in their survival, including democracies as well as some consolidated authoritarian regimes, will trade more on the extensive margin than vulnerable autocracies, which will block trade in products that would expand interpersonal contact among their citizens. We apply a two-stage Bayesian LASSO estimator to detailed measures of institutional features and highly disaggregated product-level trade data encompassing 131 countries over a half century. Consistent with our model, we find that (a) political institutions matter for the extensive margin of trade but not for the intensive margin and (b) the effects of political institutions on the extensive margin of trade vary across products, falling most heavily on those goods that involve extensive interpersonal contact.

The trade and income effects of RCEP: implications for China and Korea

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to simulate the effects of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) on trade and income, with a particular interest in the effect on China and Korea. Design/methodology/approach This paper adopts a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model developed by Li et al. (2017) to simulate the effect of RCEP. The CGE model is grounded in the firm heterogeneity theory. Within this framework, the feature of dynamic movements of firms allows the CGE model to capture the extensive margin of trade increase. Aside from that, the CGE model separates foreign direct investment (FDI) from domestic investment, which helps to explain the effect of the removal of FDI barriers. Findings Results show that RCEP will increase trade of China by 1.5 percent. The income of China will increase by 2.5 percent. The trade increase of Korea will be $8bn, and its income will increase by 0.6 percent. In terms of welfare, China will gain $214bn and Korea will gain $23~35bn, taking 2~3 percent of Korea’s GDP. Also, the reduction of behind-the-border barriers presents very significant effects. Originality/value The main contribution of this paper is to quantitatively assess the potential effects of RCEP on trade and income. The positive findings would propel RCEP parties, especially China and Korea, to reach an agreement as soon as possible.

The Impact of Innovation on Financial and Insurance Services Exports

Striving for growth in service exports is an important way many service-oriented countries offset trade deficits commonly generated by a disproportional dependence on manufactured imports. Exports of business services are a significant subset of overall services trade. This paper examines whether innovation enhances exports of financial and insurance services by firms operating in these service industries. Results indicate that innovation has a sizable, positive impact on financial and insurance services exports. This holds true when examining a country’s aggregate level of insurance and financial services exports, as well as bilateral exports to a specific trade partner. However, robustness tests suggest that the positive effect of innovation on bilateral financial and insurance services exports holds true only at the extensive margin of trade (i. e. the decision to export), but not at the intensive margin (i. e. how much to export).

The Anatomy of Trade Deflection

This study employs four-dimensional (firm-product-destination-year) export data of Brazilian firms to analyze firm-level responses when faced with an antidumping protection in a particular export market. We examine the extent to which firms shift their exports to other destinations in response to the antidumping duties. Our findings suggest that trade deflection depends on past export status in export markets. Firms deflect trade but only to destinations where they already have an established trading relationship. This prior relationship is important both for the intensive as well as for the extensive margin of trade alternative destinations. In addition to making sense of existing puzzles in trade deflection, this paper makes an important contribution by demonstrating how much the fixed costs of developing an export destination matter in terms of trade deflection.

What Determines Exports of Luxury Products? The Case of Cognac

This paper analyzes the determinants of Cognac brandy exports using a unique database on Cognac shipments to more than 140 destinations between 1996 and 2013. We use this database to construct descriptive statistics concerning the evolution of Cognac exports during this period. We also construct a database of protectionist policies that affect worldwide Cognac exports. We analyze the determinants of Cognac exports and base our empirical strategy on Heckman's (1979) procedure. We estimate successively the impact of geographical, demand and policy factors on the extensive margin of trade and the intensive margin of trade. We also control for the possibility of an endogeneity bias on the probability of trade. We show that i) as with other luxury products, the elasticity of Cognac exports to distance is negative, significant, and relatively small, while the elasticity to gross domestic product (GDP) is positive, significant, and relatively large; and ii) average customs duties do not have a significant impact on the intensive margin but significantly and positively affect the probability of trade. We discuss this last result and correct the endogeneity bias using tax revenues of importing countries in percentage of GDP as an instrument. (JEL Classifications: F10, F14)