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The impact of trade and technology in the European case is assessed. A framework is developed which incorporates employment effects of (i) export expansion (ii) import competition and (iii) labour-saving productivity improvements. In this context, evidence is found for the hypothesis that international trade induces adjustments in technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the deeper integration of the new EU accession states into the Single Market. Building on the assumption that observed trade patterns can be taken to reveal trading costs between members and non-members of a bloc, I develop a model-consistent Dixit-Stiglitz general equilibrium-based calibration technique. Using this, I investigate numerically the effects of the recent EU enlargement, suggesting that deeper integration, which removed the border costs implied by 1990s trade patterns, could raise trade by 50-100% and incomes in the accession states by 10-20%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper quantifies the contribution of exports to economic growth in Central and East European countries (CEECs) during transition. Two theoretical models are examined: the first is based on an aggregate production function which includes exports as an additional 'input'; while the second is based on a two-sector (exports and non-exports) model where exports provide positive externalities in non-export production. Each model is estimated with both fixed and random effects using panel data. Results show that the random effects model is preferred and that exports have a significant impact on economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the sources of the observed price disparities in the EEC automobile market. On the basis of an oligopoly model with product differentiation, this paper tests, and fails to reject, the hypothesis that automobile firms segregate national markets in the EEC. It is found that value added tax differentials and the existence of different import restraints (quotas and VERs) are important contributing factors to price disparities. On the contrary, transportation cost differentials are not a significant explanatory variable. Finally, the preference for domestic products or 'national' brands is found as an important contributing factor in Britain and Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is the aim of the present paper to contribute to this process by reproducing Barro--Pesaran experiment with data from four western European economies: France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Such a study, it is hoped, will determine the extent to which the conclusions reached by the above authors may be confirmed for countries whose political and economic environments differ from those present in the US and the UK.
The choice of the countries in our sample was motivated by the following three factors. (1) The bulk of extant empirical work pertains to US and occasionally to UK data [Barro (1977, 1978) and Pesaran (1982a) use US data while Attfield et al. (1981) estimate a quarterly model for the UK fashioned after Barro's model]. (2) The size of these four countries and the importance to their economies of international trade provide the opportunity to test the contending models in the ease of small open economies. (3) The countries retain the basic complexion of a decentralized capitalist economy. Extension of this research to other countries with different economic and political environment would be desirable.
Before presenting our empirical results, their place within the broader controversy of New Classical vs Keynesian has to be highlighted. Accordingly, the rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II contains a general survey of the issues separating New Classicals from Keynesians. In Section III, the model and the procedures to be followed in our empirical work are laid out, and the relevant empirical findings for the US economy are, briefly, surveyed. Section IV presents our empirical results, and Section V contains the conclusions of the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We exploit a dataset on financial integration within Europe to answer a novel question in the international Real Business Cycle (RBC) literature. Does financial integration within Europe matter for the international transmission of business cycles between the United States and Europe? We find that it does, and that as European countries become more financially integrated among themselves, European business cycles start to 'decouple' from those in the United States. We show that this is true for three macro indicators of economic activity: Gross Domestic Product (GDP), consumption and investment, and for five alternative measures of the degree of financial integration. We also show that the effect of trade linkages becomes insignificant once financial factors are accounted for. Our work has interesting policy implications since it unveils the importance of further integration in the EU to slow down the transmission of aggregate shocks among industrialized nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article asks whether the business cycles of the EU countries have become more or less synchronized after the introduction of the euro. Our findings show that all countries in our EU sample are better synchronized with the EMU-wide economy in the post-EMU period than they were before the euro. We also show that this increase in synchronization is present in all components of aggregate demand, as well as two supply-side variables, but it is more pronounced in the trade components (imports and, particularly, exports). It is also shown that the increase in trade within the EMU area is at least partly responsible for the increase in cyclical synchronization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the relation between the international trade, the foreign direct investment and the total factor productivity of the Mediterranean partner countries of Europe within the framework of a cointegrated panel model. The results, obtained from data on seven Mediterranean partner countries of Europe (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey), show that FDI and human capital are complementary in the acquisition of productivity gains. We identify the threshold level of human capital from which the received foreign investments generate beneficial effects. In a more general way, the improvement of the total factor productivity via the international openness results only from the indirect effects related to the transfer of technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between international trade and economic growth has been an area of interest to many researchers in recent years. Although the literature is broad with respect to this topic, few studies have focused on the particular effect of cultural exports and imports on economic growth. This study addresses the relationship between trade in cultural goods and economic growth for 31 countries in Europe for the period 2004–2017, through a vector error correction model (VECM). A panel Granger causality test and a system generalized method of moments (GMM) are also utilized in this study. Cultural trade is characterized by exports and imports of cultural goods. The results indicate there is a long-run equilibrium relationship between gross domestic product, total exports, capital formation and labour force. Cultural exports and imports have a positive effect on GDP in the long run. In the short run, there is Granger causality of cultural imports on economic growth, total exports, total imports and capital formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the extent and sources of the UK's comparative advantage within the European Union (EU). It finds that both inter-industry and intra-industry trade are important despite clear aggregation effects. Having established that there is a significant degree of inter-industry specialization the sources of this are analysed, using a factor-content approach. Results are reported for aggregate factors of production and, in the case of labour, by disaggregated skill categories. A key finding is that the UK's net trade with the EU is driven more by a specialization in specific types of skill than by an overall endowment of human capital. The results also suggest that the inter-industry specialization cannot be explained by comparative advantage alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objectives of this paper are to test the relative version of the law of one price in the short and the long run at various levels of aggregation for traded goods. The use of an error-correction model is made to test the validity of the hypothesis in the short run with a built-in tendency to one price in the long run. Using unit value trade data at the aggregate, 2-digit and 3-digit levels of the Standard International Trade Classification, the law of one price is generally rejected in the short run, although a long-run proportional relationship between prices is often found. An intriguing feature of the results is that when data on the prices of fairly homogeneous products are used the hypothesis is rejected both in the short and long run. This suggests that non-price changes which are likely to be incorporated in unit values are probably gradual and affect EEC countries in a similar manner. Price changes, however, are somewhat erratic and hence with unit-value data, the law of one price in the long run is not contradicted, while it is refuted at the desegregated level when price data are used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theoretically necessary and sufficient condition for the correspondence between 'revealed' comparative advantage and pre-trade relative prices derived by Hillman (1980) is analysed empirically for virtually all countries of the world over an extended period of time. This yields 10 stylized facts, including that (i) violations of the Hillman condition are small as a share of the number of observations, but substantial as a share of the value of world exports, (ii) violations occur relatively frequently in the period 1970-1984 and more rarely in the period 1985-1997 and (iii) violations occur foremost in primary product and natural resource intensive sectors and for countries in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe. An additional bonus of verifying the Hillman condition in empirical research is its ability to identify erroneously classified trade flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study assesses the effect of USD-Euro parity on a small open economy where exports are predominantly denominated in Euros and imports are denominated in USD. Empirical evidence from Turkey suggests that a positive change in the USD value of the Euro appreciates the local currency, decreases inflation and increases output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study we present a model for the outgoing telephone traffic from Spain to a group of 24 European countries. We use a point-to-point model that incorporates the specific characteristics of the international long distance service and the socioeconomic relationships between Spain and this group of countries, taking into account the simultaneity between incoming and outgoing traffic. Recently available data on minutes of conversation in each direction allow us to use panel data for the period 1981-91. We use an orthogonal deviations estimator with instrumental variables. The orthogonal deviations transformation allows the specific unobservable characteristics of each route of traffic to be controlled and the instrumental variables take care of the simultaneity between incoming and outgoing traffic. We estimate a total elasticity of the minutes of outgoing traffic per line with respect to its own real price of - 0.81. Other significant variables are: the volume of trade, the number of visitors from each country, the number of foreign residents and the minutes of incoming traffic. This last variable measures the so-called reciprocal calling effect which is highly significant with a positive elasticity of 0.78. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]