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We examine export pricing by Indian manufacturing firms in the early 2000s using a unique data set that matches firm characteristics with product and destination‐level trade data. We find that, in contrast to China and other countries, firm productivity is negatively associated with export prices, and export prices are negatively associated with distance while positively associated with remoteness. Our conjecture is that Indian innovation costs, which are higher than China's, drive down the scope for quality differentiation causing a negative association between productivity and prices. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical evidence consistent with heterogenous goods and short quality ladders, a theoretical possibility noted in the study by Antoniades (2012), an outcome that arises here because of domestic Indian economic and regulatory features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sheds light on the international spillovers of China's reforms in upgrading industrial capabilities, liberalizing capital account, internationalizing the renminbi, and transition to flexible exchange rates. Drawing on two-country New Keynesian model of endogenous entry and portfolio adjustment, we find that China's industrial upgrading that peddles on yuan appreciation lifts all boats through global production network irrespective of capital account convertibility, degree of renminbi internationalization, and exchange rate reform. Feasibility of appreciation-driven upgrading is called into question, however, when renminbi reform and capital account liberalization go in parallel. We also show that international spillovers disappear once renminbi internationalization is associated with liberalized capital account and flexible renminbi exchange rates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper quantifies the separate contribution of idiosyncratic productivity and demand growth on aggregate Chinese exports. We develop firm, product, market and year-specific measures of productivity and demand. We use these measures to document a number of novel findings that distinguish the growth of Chinese exports. First, we document that changes in demand explain nearly 78–89% of aggregate export growth, while only 11–22% of export growth is determined by productivity growth. Second, our results highlight two mechanisms which contribute significantly to aggregate export growth: the rapid reallocation of market shares towards products with growing demand, and high rates of product exit among low demand products. Investigating the mechanisms underlying these results we find that new exporters suffer demand shocks which are 66% smaller than those observed for incumbent producers in the same product market. By comparison, we find that there is only an 8% difference on average between the productivity of new and incumbent exporters. Repeating our exercise with revenue productivity reveals much smaller differences. This is largely attributed to differential movements in prices and marginal costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors examine Chinese-US trade flows over the 1994-2012 period, and find that, in line with the conventional wisdom, the value of China's exports to the US responds negatively to real renminbi (RMB) appreciation, while imports respond positively. Further, the combined price effects on exports and imports imply an increase in the real value of the RMB will reduce China's trade balance. The use of alternative exchange rate measures and data on different trade classifications yields additional insights. Firms more subject to market forces exhibit greater price sensitivity. The price elasticity is larger for ordinary exports than for processing exports. Finally, accounting for endogeneity and measurement error matters. Hence, purging the real exchange rate of the portion responding to policy, or using the deviation of the real exchange rate from the equilibrium level yields a stronger measured effect than when using the unadjusted bilateral exchange rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Import competition from China is pervasive in the sense that for many good categories, the competitive environment that U.S. firms face in these markets is strongly driven by the prices of Chinese imports, and so is their pricing decision. This paper quantifies the effect of the government-controlled appreciation of the Chinese renminbi vis-à-vis the USD from 2005 to 2008 on the prices charged by U.S. domestic producers. In a panel spanning the period from 1994 to 2010 and including up to 519 manufacturing sectors, import price changes of Chinese goods pass into U.S. producer prices at an average rate of 0.7, while import price changes that can be traced back to exchange rate movements of other trade partners only have mild effects on U.S. prices. Further analysis points to the importance of trade integration, variable markups, and demand complementarities on the one side, and to the importance of imported intermediate goods on the other side as drivers of these patterns. Simulations incorporating these microeconomic findings reveal that a substantial revaluation of the renminbi would result in a pronounced increase in aggregate U.S. producer price inflation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is believed to greatly benefit the developing countries of the Asia—Pacific (AP) region, most of the countries, such as China, are still hesitant to join. The major concern for these countries is whether or not the gains from the free trade provisions of the TPP will provide enough of an advantage given that most of them have already joined the WTO. In this paper, I first apply Feenstra’s (1995) TRI to gauge the actual Canadian tariff barriers facing five Asia—Pacific developing countries: China, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. The calculation of TRIs enables us to estimate the gains (from retrieving deadweight loss due to tariff distortion) to Canada if it completely removes its tariff barriers from the 2010 level against the five exporting countries. The gains for Canada would reach USD 276.45 million solely from China’s exports, and another USD 33.96 million total from the four other countries. Then, based on the gravity model, I estimate the impact of tariff reduction on imports and the gains, in terms of possible export growth, to the five developing countries. I find China’s exports to Canada may increase by 60.58%. Export growth then would be 68.21% for Indonesia, 39.77% for Malaysia, 69.64% for the Philippines, and 42.62% for Thailand. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From 2000 to 2007, Chinese exports grew at a phenomenal pace. Our paper uses finely detailed Chinese export data (8-digit Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System codes) combined with US trade data to explore how this was achieved. Although general explanations such as China's exchange rate policy no doubt played a role, we find that sector-specific stories, effective Chinese industrial policy and fortuitous timing were more critical. The detailed trade data reveal that 'new' technology goods, such as cell phones, LCD screens and laptops, played a key role. Finally, we use the data to examine the relationship between Chinese exports and global manufacturing, in particular US manufacturing employment. We find that competition from China in both domestic and foreign markets likely contributed to a significant decline in USA manufacturing employment, but that relatively low US investment and slow GDP growth in the US following the 2001 recession played an equally important role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a new channel of FDI spillovers on domestic firms, which operates through imitation of original products. Domestic heterogeneous firms may not introduce any new products, introduce a new product line (innovate), or develop a variety that is a close substitute to an existing product line (imitate). The presence of foreign firms generates incentives for imitation because they introduce original products that are vertically differentiated from domestic products. Using firm-level panel data for China, we find that increased FDI presence in a given industry leads to more imitation, but not necessarily more innovation, by domestic firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China and India are rapidly growing, labor-abundant economies with very different export mixes. China is more integrated into global production sharing for manufactures, while services exports are more important for India. Even assuming India integrates more comprehensively into global production chains, there will be opportunities for rapid growth in both countries. Improvement in the range and quality of their exports can create substantial welfare benefits for the world, and for China and India, and can offset the terms-of-trade losses otherwise associated with rapid export growth. Most countries will need to respond to increased competition in some sectors, and to greater opportunities in others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1978, the bulk of foreign direct investment (FDI) has gone to the south-eastern coastal areas in China, with only a small portion received inland. With the launch of the Western Development Strategy in 2000 and the Central China Rising Strategy in 2004, the choice of investment locations has expanded to inland areas. Based on panel data covering 98 inland cities from 1999 to 2005, this study identifies location preference variables for FDI invested in China's inland areas, and finds that well-established factors such as natural resources and low labor costs are not important factors in determining FDI locations within China's inland. Instead, policy incentives and industrial agglomeration are the most important factors. The findings of the present study have policy implications for both host country authorities and multinational corporations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses 4-digit SITC data to identify groups of manufactured goods exported from China to the USA that have strong or rising comparative advantages. We find that most of the trades are inter-industry, with only a small portion being vertical intra-industry trades (IIT). Our results confirm that Sino-US trade is complementary. We construct an imbalanced index of IIT, and identify the goods groups that aggravate and reduce the US trade deficit with China. We suggest an approach for calculating a dynamic IIT index that might mitigate the aggregation bias of the existing methodologies. Our improved index reveals that the dynamic imbalances of US-Chinese IIT in manufactured goods are worse than their static IIT imbalances, which means that it would be difficult to correct the deficit of US trade with China in the following couple of years. Adjusting and improving the structures of industries and products is China's major task for sustainable trade growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]