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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate changes of China’s agri-food exports to Germany caused by China’s accession to WTO and the global financial crisis in a quantitative way. The paper aims to detect structural breaks and compare differences before and after the change points. Design/methodology/approach – The structural breaks detection procedures in this paper can be applied to find out two different types of change points, i.e. in the middle and at the end of one time series. Then time series and regression models are used to compare differences of trade relationship before and after the detected change points. The methods can be employed in any economic series and work well in practice. Findings – The results indicate that structural breaks in 2002 and 2009 are caused by China’s accession to WTO and the financial crisis. Time series and regression models show that the development of China’s exports to Germany in agri-food products has different features in different sub-periods. Before 1999, there is no significant relationship between China’s exports to Germany and Germany’s imports from the world. Between 2002 and 2008 the former depends on the latter very strongly, and China’s exports to Germany developed quickly and stably. It decreased, however suddenly in 2009, caused by the great reduction of Germany’s imports from the world in that year. But China’s market share in Germany still had a small gain. Analysis of two categories in agri-food trade also leads to similar conclusions. Comparing the two events we see rather different patterns even if they both indicate structural breaks in the development of China’s agri-food exports to Germany. Originality/value – This paper partly originally proposes two statistical algorithms for detecting different kinds of structural breaks in the middle part and at the end of a short-time series, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global trade growth has slowed since 2012 relative both to its strong historical performance and to overall economic growth. This paper aims to quantify the role of weak economic growth and changes in its decomposition in accounting for the slowdown in trade using a reduced form and a structural approach. Both analytical investigations suggest that the overall weakness in economic activity, particularly investment, has been the primary restraint on trade growth, accounting for about 80% of the decline in the growth of the volume of goods trade between 2012-2016 and 2003-2007. However, other factors are also weighing on trade in recent years, especially in emerging market and developing economies, as evidenced by the non-negligible role attributed to trade costs by the structural approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the relative sophistication of the Korean export products in manufacturing industry both across and within products between 1989 and 2012 using the very detailed United States import data. I first compare Korea's export performance in the US market in terms of market share, product penetration and export similarity to those of its rival countries. Next, I propose far more extensive estimates of difference in export quality between Korea and its trading rivals. The estimated quality difference reveals substantial heterogeneity across products and countries. In particular, this paper shows that the current greatest competitor of Korea is still Japan in the US market, but China is steadily climbing up the quality ladder and is chasing after Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese rare earth export policies currently result in accelerating its depletion. Thus adopting an optimal export trade selection strategy is crucial to determining and ultimately identifying the ideal trading partners. This paper introduces a multi-attribute decision-making methodology which is then used to select the optimal trading partner. In the method, an evaluation criteria system is established to assess the seven top trading partners based on three dimensions: political relationships, economic benefits and industrial security. Specifically, a simple additive weighing model derived from an additive utility function is utilized to calculate, rank and select alternatives. Results show that Japan would be the optimal trading partner for Chinese rare earths. The criteria evaluation method of trading partners for China's rare earth exports provides the Chinese government with a tool to enhance rare earth industrial policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ekonomik Yaklaşim is the property of Ekonomik Yaklasim Dernegi (Ekonomik Yaklasim Association) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The objective of this paper is to quantify the potential gains in trade performance from the implementation of trade facilitation reform. The study applies a gravity model augmented with trade facilitation, regulatory quality and infrastructure indicators to assess the impact of trade facilitation and other trade-related constraints on export performance. Quantitatively, our results suggest that a 10 per cent improvement in trade facilitation would yield an increase in exports of about 5 per cent. Identical percentage improvements in the regulatory environment and in the quality of infrastructure provision would result in increases of 9–11 per cent and 8 per cent, respectively. The results confirm that while trade facilitation can contribute to improved export performance, improvements in the quality of the regulatory environment and the basic transport and communications infrastructure are equally or more important, in facilitating export growth. The conclusion is that trade facilitation alone is unlikely to result in a significant improvement in export performance. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a two-country dynamic general equilibrium model with status-seeking agents. We show that the introduction of status-seeking behavior brings about new properties in equilibrium dynamics. While there exists a continuum of steady states in the standard dynamic models, the present framework demonstrates that, under some conditions, there uniquely exists an incompletely specialized steady state, which is locally saddle-point stable. Therefore, catching-up and overtaking phenomena seen in economic development can be explained, and comparative statics analysis also is made possible. Our comparative statics analysis illustrates, for example, that trade pattern is determined in the Heckscher–Ohlin manner; the patient country acts just like a capital abundant one to export the capital-intensive good. Furthermore, as distinct from the existing literature, the present study shows that the existence of an incompletely specialized steady state can be ensured even if the two countries conduct different policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The very rapid economic growth of the People's Republic of China (PRC), its dramatic success in world export markets and its heavy receipts of foreign direct investment (FDI) have generated much thought and debate in policy and business circles in different parts of the world. This paper surveys evidence from research by ADB Institute staff and Visiting Fellows conducted over the last two years that sheds light on these issues. The paper examines differences in trade structure between the PRC and its trading partners, finding that the PRC's current structure is closest to that of Korea and Taipei, China in 1990. It also considers changes in market share and finds that the PRC exports are eroding the market share of its regional neighbours in the USA and Japan, particularly in products in which trading partners are most specialised. There is no evidence of FDI diversion from elsewhere in the region to PRC. The trade diversion effects in the US and Japan are offset however by strong trade creation as the rapid growth in PRC leads to a substantial rise in its imports. The paper surveys the projections of models that demonstrate the gains in greater trade and income for the region from closer trade links with the PRC. The broad conclusion that emerges is that whilst there may be risks to individual sectors in all countries concerned, the pattern of regional trade and investment that is emerging is mutually beneficial, provided enterprises and governments representing the PRC's regional partners respond effectively to the adjustments required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since at least the 1960s, the European Union ( EU) has offered various kinds of non-reciprocal trade preferences for developing countries. Originally, these trade preferences had at least two policy goals: (i) to increase export volumes for developing countries and thereby boost their export earnings and (ii) to facilitate export diversification. While extensive research has confirmed that the first of these goals is typically met, the second goal seems to have been largely forgotten by researchers as well as in policy circles. The aim of this paper was therefore to analyse the impact of the EU's non-reciprocal trade preferences for developing countries on export diversification. Our estimation results suggest that some trade preference programmes, such as the Generalised Scheme of Preferences ( GSP), lead to increasing ranges of export products. By contrast, preferences offered to Mediterranean countries typically have no significant effects, and African, Caribbean and Pacific ( ACP) preferences actually have negative effects towards the end of our time period, suggesting that ACP countries may respond to preferences by specialising into fewer goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents results from a survey of geographic stability and the geographical concentration of Bulgarian export. An innovative approach has been used through the approbation of specially developed coefficients. The results show that Bulgarian export over the last fifteen years has been balanced in terms of its geographical structure. At the same time, it is highly sustainable concerning the main partner countries, and they remain unchanged over the whole period under review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of various factors on bilateral services trade, relative to that on bilateral goods trade. To accomplish this purpose, using the standard gravity model, we ran regressions on bilateral services trade and goods trade between 10 OECD member countries and other economies (including OECD member and nonmember countries) for the years 1999 and 2000. One main and interesting result is that services trade is better predicted by gravity equations than goods trade. Another interesting result is that there is a complementary relationship between goods exports and services imports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a dynamic industry model with heterogeneous firms to analyze the intra-industry effects on international trade. The model shows how the exposure to trade will induce only the more productive firms to enter the export market (while some less productive firms continue to produce only for the domestic market) and will simultaneously force the least productive firms to exit. It then shows how further increases in the industry's exposure to trade lead to additional inter-firm reallocations towards more productive firms. The paper also shows how the aggregate industry productivity growth generated by the reallocations contributes to a welfare gain, thus highlighting a benefit from trade that has not been examined theoretically before. The paper adapts Hopenhayn's (1992a) dynamic industry model to monopolistic competition in a general equilibrium setting. In so doing, the paper provides an extension of Krugman's (1980) trade model that incorporates firm level productivity differences. Firms with different productivity levels coexist in an industry because each firm faces initial uncertainly concerning its productivity before making an irreversible investment to enter the industry. Entry into the export market is also costly, but the firm's decision to export occurs after it gains knowledge of its productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has two purposes. The first is to introduce an econometric model of export pricing and sales behaviour, the parameters of which vary with some indicator of excess productive capacity. For the individual firm this is achieved simply by proposing that it follows a demand-constrained regime when levels of working are low, and a supply constrained regime when full capacity is approached. Application of this sort of model to the whole economy would lead to implausible discontinuities; as overall capacity utilization rose a switching point would be reached where factors influencing demand—world trade, competitor prices—became suddenly unimportant and tho se influencing supply—investment, profitability—became suddenly all-important. The second purpose of this paper is to offer a resolution of this conceptual inelegance by postulating that at any one time firms experience a variety of capacity utilization conditions distributed around means which are generally high at peaks of the domestic business cycle and low in troughs. The resulting aggregate equations exhibit no unwonted discontinuities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on Albert Hirschman's paper "The Commodity Structure of World Trade," published in the August 1943 issue of "Quarterly Journal of Economics." In the paper, Hirschman devised a method for the subdivision of the foreign trade of individual countries into various categories of interchange. Having applied this procedure to world trade as a whole, he then showed that the largest proportion of world trade consisted, each year between 1925 and 1937, of an exchange of primary products against primary products. According to Hirschman's method, the exports of manufactures are matched against the imports of manufactures and the exports of primary products are matched against the imports of primary products on the assumption that exports provide in each instance the buying power for the corresponding imports. The amounts left unmatched are then postulated to represent the amounts of trade accounted for by the exchange of manufactures against primary products. This article does not unfavorably reflects on Hirschman's other findings and particularly his demonstration that the almost continuous industrialization in the years prior to World War II has led to an increasing share of world trade.

In his very interesting paper[1] Kravis argues, on the basis of his analysis of data from a GATT study,[2] that ". . . export success of L.D.C.s did not depend primarily on the world market factor," and that "the successful performers among the L.D.C.s were differentiated from the less successful performers primarily by increases in their shares in world markets for their traditional exports rather than by good fortune in world demand for their particular exports." From this he concludes, "The implication is that internal factors affecting the mobility of resources rather than external demand conditions account for good export performance." Given the well-known positive association between export performance and growth of real G.N.P.,[3] the question of the factors affecting export performance of L.D.C.s is clearly an important one. These conclusions are therefore of great interest. MY paper was laregly intended to marshal the evidence agaisnt the proposition, widely accepted, at least until recently, that the poor export performance of less developed countries (L.D.C.s) was attributable to factors external to them, particularly to unfavourable world market trends and structural characteristics. As one part of the evidence, I used the GATT statistics referred to by Mr. Adams in order to show that the successful export performers among the L.D.C.s were not simply the passive beneficiaries of booming market conditions for their shares in world markets for their traditional products and diversified their exports into new lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We test the trade finance channel of exports by controlling for the bank credit channel. Using Turkey's July 2012 adoption of Basel II as a quasi-natural experiment, we examine whether shocks to trade financing costs affect exports. With data for 16,662 Turkish exporters shipping 2,888 different products to 158 countries, we find that the share of letters-of-credit-based exports decreases (increases) when the associated risk weights for counterparty exposure increase (decrease) after the adoption of Basel II. However, growth of firm-product-country-level exports remains unaffected. Trade financing might have a lesser role in exports than previously suggested by the previous literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes as inputs for its analysis the trade flows between Colombia and a selected group of the East Asian countries, the export-import trade for each country, the intra-industry trade taking place in those countries and the Colombian national competitiveness situation. From that infor-mation it is inferred that Colombia is still following the Dependency path which means that trade with the most developed Asian countries may fall in the circumscription of exporting primary sector products. Only if Co-lombia seeks to enter in the intra-industry trade sectors in the Asian mar-kets with competitive products, will be able to diversify its export basket and break the pattern imposed by dependency. Therefore, the priorities for Colombia are mainly achieving high national competitiveness and produ-cing competitive products, but right now competitiveness is still weak and this demands upgrading its competitive factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the implications for the pattern of international trade of differences among regions within countries—what we call "lumpiness." If factors of production are sufficiently unevenly distributed across regions, then the pattern of trade of the country as a whole may depart from what it would have been had factors been evenly distributed. Thus lumpiness in the geographical distribution of factors can be a determinant of trade. We show in particular that if other determinants of trade are absent, then a country will tend to export the good that intensively uses its lumpier (i.e., more unevenly distributed) factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A transition in international trade has taken place in recent years. The economies of many Western European nations and Japan have been revitalized, due largely to American aid in the immediate postwar period; and these same nations now are energetically competing for markets with U.S.-made goods. The author examines the balance-of-payments problem faced by the United States; the role that increased exports can play in helping to solve these difficulties; and the joint business and government efforts being made by the National Export Expansion Committee of the Department of Commerce and its regional committees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Export performance in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is low, unlike the other developing regions, with an intra-regional trade still weak and a trade pattern that remains very concentrated even if some progress seems to appear. Recent findings suggest that South-South trade allows more improvement in export diversification of developing economies than North-South trade. We examine the diversification of trading partners and more precisely, to what extent the nature of external trading partners matters for the geographical diversification of intra-SSA trade. We apply this economic intuition to trade relationships between the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and SSA countries in a context of shifting wealth and a trade reorientation for developing economies. We use a theory-consistent and robust structural gravity model with three different dependent variables (value of bilateral export flows, binary variable for strictly positive export flows, number of export destinations) based on a worldwide database over the period 1948-2012. We attempt to compare the exports of each member of the BRICs to SSA in order to know whether there are different effects on the geographical diversification of intra-SSA trade. Globally, Chinese exports to SSA have the strongest impact on the geographical diversification of intra-SSA trade relative to the other BRICs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trade security issues involve customs control and trade facilitation, sustaining competitiveness of domestic producers under open economy, optimization of foreign trade structure, stability of trade flows, and dependency on markets and suppliers. We analyze the structure and trends in exports of the EU-28 Member States, Ukraine and Turkey, as well as their bilateral trade in goods and services. Nowadays both these countries have trade preferences in bilateral trade with the EU. Considering goods export structures, Turkey is much more competitor for the EU than Ukraine. Ukraine is rather a complementary economy to the EU and no Member State is vulnerable to competitive pressure from Ukrainian exports of goods. Despite both Turkey and Ukraine have similar levels of services export structure similarity with the EU, Ukrainian services exports are 6 times lower than the ones of Turkey, therefore threat of competition with Ukraine is minor. Competition with Ukrainian services exports is relatively higher in Central Europe, but since transport is a major type of services, competition can be balanced by cooperation benefits based on route connectivity under geographical proximity. Turkey is a major competitor to Southern Europe (especially Greece) and some other Member States. Turkey is larger trade partner for the EU because of higher income per capita than in Ukraine and longer period of free trade regime with the EU. Economic recovery of Ukraine after the crisis in 2014-15, free trade regime and approximation of customs legislation of Ukraine under the Association Agreement can also help to facilitate bilateral trade and improve trade security. Economic development of Ukraine based on foreign direct investment of companies from European and other countries in the Ukrainian economy and the opening of the EU market for Ukrainian goods can replace exports of some industrial products from Turkey. The economic crisis in Ukraine in 2014-15 led to a negative growth of exports from the EU to Ukraine, while exports rose to Turkey. Provision of EU export growth in Ukraine will largely depend on the pace of economic recovery. However, several Member States have higher rates of export growth (especially in Greece) or import growth from Ukraine than from Turkey. But the overall level of trade dependence on Turkey and Ukraine is quite low. EU trade balance is positive with Ukraine in goods and services. The positive balance of foreign trade with Turkey is not compensated by the trade deficit in services. Greece has a trade balance in surplus with Turkey and Ukraine both in goods and in services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de la CEPAL is the property of United Nations Publications and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We provide evidence that increased political influence, arising from CIA interventions during the Cold War, was used to create a larger foreign market for American products. Following CIA interventions, imports from the US increased dramatically, while total exports to the US were unaffected. The surge in imports was concentrated in industries in which the US had a comparative disadvantage, not a comparative advantage. Our analysis is able to rule out decreased trade costs, changing political ideology, and an increase in US loans and grants as alternative explanations. We provide evidence that the increased imports arose through direct purchases of American products by foreign governments. (JEL D72, F14, F54, N42, N72) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de la CEPAL is the property of United Nations Publications and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the extent to which the 2006 revisions to the EU's Generalised System of Preferences improved market-access opportunities for developing-country agro-food exports. It shows that they resulted in only a slight increase in the percentage preferential margin, but that there has been a significant increase in the value of preferential trade and of the preferential margin enjoyed by exporters. This was accompanied by changes in the ranking of beneficiaries. Countries such as China, Brazil, Argentina, India and South Africa maintained their significant shares of GSP agro-food exports, but other countries such as Thailand and Vietnam have now emerged as major GSP beneficiaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Problemas del Desarrollo. Revista Latinoamericana de Economía is the property of Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. Instituto de Investigaciones Economicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Behavioral determinants and their relationship to exporting performance have been examined in varying capacities for the last several decades, although very few, in that time have examined them in a cross-cultural context. The offer here is a firm level examination of variables with a particular effort to validate performance measurements across cultural settings. Specifically, a sample of 1,246 exporting service firms from Japan, Germany and the United States are empirically analyzed in an attempt to answer the following primary questions: (a) Does a common set of high-ranking export determinants for Exceptional Exporters exist among service firms from the examined countries, combined? and furthermore, (b) Does a unique set of high-ranking export performance determinants for Exceptional Exporters exist within the service firms from each country, individually? An artificial neural network is selected as the statistical method because of the unique perspective it provides when examining a highly non-linear function with many variables, offering results that consistently prove to numerically approximate such functions much easier than conventional methods, along with the ability to dependably and accurately predict membership classification while providing weighted analyses of input variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the one hand it has been suggested, tacitly or explicitly, that an unfavourable change in the balance of trade of countries exporting chiefly primary products partly accounted for the large-scale default on foreign debt of such countries in the early 1930s. On the other hand, in a study of elasticities of demand for imports of several industrial and agricultural countries, it would seem that, as the quantity of total world trade is rising during world prosperity, the total imports into agricultural and mining countries will be rising faster than those into the industrial countries. And, that, in time of world slump and recession, the former will be falling faster than the latter. A cyclical shifts on the side of exports of different types of country is expected. These two facts taken together provide a very important clue to the cyclical pattern of change in the balance of payments of different types of country in the world. An examination of the changes in the balances of merchandise trade of the Balkan countries in the great depression will serve as a basis for tracing the main factors which account for the changes in the same period in the balances of twenty-five other countries exporting chiefly primary products.

This article presents information on the system of multilateral trade. If the chart of the network of world trade is analysed, the trade pattern is found to be empirical. It was discovered that the countries in the system could be arranged in the order of the direction of their balances of trade, so that each country had an import balance from practically all countries that preceded it in the list and an export balance to practically all countries that succeeded it. Countries have been grouped into a limited number of categories to give a synoptical view of the network. This system was not a haphazard, unstable pattern shifting in form from year to year. The great significance lies in the stability of the system. This structure of world trade was built on a solid foundation, some major principles of which will now be dealt with in a theoretical approach. The simple case of three countries which have an unequal relative supply of the three main factors of production, labour, land and capital, demonstrates the fundamental basis of a trade system.