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Copyright of Journal of International Business Studies is the property of Springer Nature 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 disparate impacts of Chinese import growth on US workers according to gender and age. I show that Chinese import growth generates larger employment losses for less skilled women than men in manufacturing. The gendered effects vary by age and are most concentrated among middle‐aged workers. The motherhood career interruption may explain the gender‐age disparities. Trade shocks depress labor outcomes more for women with children than for their male counterparts. Moreover, I find that the gender‐age differential effect is alleviated when trade shocks hit industries with longer female job tenure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expanding imports and promoting balanced trade have been the direction China has been adhering to in recent years, and are also important measures for China to build an open domestic and international dual cycle development pattern. This paper incorporates the emissions of "three industrial wastes" into the production function, uses the Slack Based Measure model and the globally referenced Malmquist-Leuenberger index to measure the green total factor productivity of Chinese enterprises from 2002 to 2013 in order to measure enterprises' green transformation development. Subsequently, it tests the green development effect of import trade from the perspective of import technology sophistication and import diversification. Afterwards, we discover that the improvement of import sophistication and import diversification can significantly promote enterprises' green transformation, largely through spillover effects and intermediate import competition effects. Furthermore, the green development promotion effect of import trade is greatly heterogeneous. The research in this article provides beneficial insights for China's economic opening-up and high-quality economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indian animal feed industry, crucial for sustaining the country’s livestock and poultry sector, heavily relies on a diverse range of feed ingredients such as soybean meal, corn, wheat, broken rice, and various energy and protein sources. Several of these commodities are in short supply for various reasons, including but not limited to stagnant productivity. Most of these commodities are imported from the world market to meet the supply shortage. The present study investigates the market competition among the exporting countries from which India imports 13 specific agricultural raw materials for feed ingredients over the decennial years of 2000, 2010 and 2020. We utilize data from the United Nations Comtrade database. Our analysis reveals India’s significant dependency on specific Asian nations, notably China, as a key source of these agricultural raw material imports. Import costs vary, prompting India to diversify its sources of imports of these agricultural commodities, spanning different continents. Such diversification of import sources is largely driven by cost-effectiveness in a competitive global market. This study provides valuable insights into India’s import dynamics and trade partnerships on these key agricultural commodities used by the feed industries (as well as some food industries), thereby offering essential information for the feed industry, commodity traders and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does state‐owned enterprise (SOE) prevalence affect the employment adjustments of firms after trade liberalisation? This paper estimates the role of the prevalence of SOEs in the labour market in import competition by using city‐industry level panel data in China from 2000 to 2006. Our results indicate that import competition decreases employment in the manufacturing industry and that SOE prevalence could partially offset the negative effect on employment. This offsetting effect is demonstrated at both extensive and intensive margins. Moreover, SOE prevalence has a positive externality for the employment of non‐SOEs under the import competition shock. Therefore, we verify the positive externality of SOEs in labour market adjustment in response to import competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the largest developing country and the second largest importer, China provides meaningful research on import competition and the global value chain (GVC). This article uses theoretical models and empirical tests to explore whether and how import competition affects the sustainable development of Chinese firms' GVCs. Moreover, we utilize China's entry into the WTO as a quasi‐natural experiment for import competition to further test the robustness of our findings. Ultimately, we find that import competition reduces the sustainable development of GVCs by decreasing the quality of imported intermediate inputs, which inhibits technology spillover, and by increasing the substitution of foreign inputs for domestic materials. Heterogeneous analyses show that import competition negatively affects ordinary trade and mixed trade firms while having no significant impact on processing trade firms. Moreover, this negative effect is especially significant for firms in eastern and central regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors investigate the effects of Chinese import competition on transitions into and out of employment using comparable worker-level data for 14 European countries. Results indicate that, on average, Chinese imports are associated with an increased probability that employed workers become unemployed and with a reduction in worker flows from unemployment to employment. In countries with high levels of employment protection, incumbent workers are shielded against the risk of job loss due to Chinese competition, but unemployed workers' prospects seem to be particularly negatively affected in these countries. The authors also provide evidence that the effects of increased Chinese imports differ by worker groups and the tasks performed on the job. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we make use of Vietnam's annual enterprise surveys to investigate the product selection and product mix responses to import competition in manufacturing firms. We estimate the effect of imports from Vietnam's free trade agreement partners on firms' product scope and sales concentration, controlling for firms and industry characteristics and the conditions in export markets. The empirical results consistently indicate that Vietnam's manufacturing firms narrow the product scope and concentrate on better selling products in response to rising import competition. Given the dominant presence of quality sorting in the manufacturing industries, our analysis suggests an aggregate quality improvement as firms reallocate sales towards high-quality products in responses to competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, manufacturing firmsin the United States have faced increasing import competition from low-wage countries, especiallyChina. Doesthis competition hurt or help firm innovation? This paper studies the effect of the surge in imports from China on innovation by US manufacturing firms. We first propose a theoretical framework that generates an inverted-U-shaped curve of innovation on imitation, which is based on the endogenous price elasticity of demand for the product in a Cournot model. We then take the theoretical prediction to data on publicly listed firms in the Compustat data set from 1990 to 2010. We find consistent evidence that Chinese import competition had an inverted-U effect on firm innovation, as measured by patent counts and citation-weighted patents. Our result suggests that when import penetration is less than 60% it positively affects firm innovation, but when it is more than 60%, this positive effect is inverted. This inverted-U relation persists when we instrument import competition in the United States by using Chinese import penetration in the United Kingdom and when we test the robustness of the results by including sector-specific trends. We find that the inverted-U relationship is steeper for firms in high-tech industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of the rise in Chinese import competition on the Australian labour market from 1991 to 2007. Using the data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Labour Force Survey, I find three main results. First, the Chinese import competition generates net job gains for the economy at both aggregate and sectoral levels. The manufacturing and service sectors both experience a growth in employment due to the movements of workers between and within industries. Second, the job losses in manufacturing industries are accompanied by expansions in services industries. The Chinese import exposure reorganises the job allocations from manufacturing to services. Third, the industrial shifts and skill‐biased technical change caused by the Chinese imports bring about job polarisation. Estimates show evidence of job concentration on low‐skilled and high‐skilled workers while also a weakening focus on middle‐skilled occupations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 21st century, the share of service businesses in the total income of the manufacturing industry has experienced a notable increase, marking a significant trend towards the servitization of manufacturing. This transition has emerged as a pivotal direction for global manufacturing. While existing literature extensively examines servitization within closed market environments, there remains a dearth of research addressing its performance within an open global economic system. Consequently, this study delves into the impact of import competition on manufacturing servitization from the perspective of international trade. To undertake this investigation, the study leverages datasets from the CSMAR Database, the cninfo Information Network, the United Nations Commodity Trade Database (UN Comtrade), and the China Industrial Statistics Yearbook. Drawing upon existing literature characterizing servitization-related indicators and examining firms' servitization triggers, this paper analyzes the effects of import shocks on various facets of servitization. Empirical findings indicate several key points. First, the servitization of Chinese firms correlates positively with the level of import competition within their respective industries, with regression results demonstrating robustness after addressing endogeneity concerns. Second, while servitization contributes to increased revenues for manufacturing firms--showing an average revenue increase of 2.25% for every 10% rise in servitization--it fails to shield these firms from the revenue impacts of import competition. Third, the pursuit of customeroriented servitization exacerbates the negative impact of import competition on manufacturing revenues, whereas no significant effect is observed for firms pursuing product-oriented servitization. Relative to existing studies, this paper offers several contributions. First, it contextualizes the service-oriented behavior of manufacturing enterprises within the framework of foreign trade openness, elucidating the emergence of the "servitization paradox" through the lens of international trade. Second, it distinguishes between the extensive and intensive boundaries of enterprise service-oriented strategies, examining how import competition affects the involvement in service-oriented enterprises and refining the manifestations of servitization. Third, it categorizes the motives driving servitization into two types--achieving economies of scale and capitalizing on main business externalities--and investigates whether firms undertake servitization as a proactive choice or as a defensive strategy against competition, thereby assessing whether manufacturing servitization represents a transitional phase in China's industrial transformation and upgrading process. This study sheds light on the underlying dynamics of manufacturing enterprise transformation towards servitization within the context of international trade, offering valuable insights for strategic decision-making amidst competitive import pressures. Additionally, it informs government efforts to adjust China's industrial structure, thereby fostering the development of its manufacturing sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the extent to which German import competition has contributed to the observed differential decline in manufacturing employment across French regions. The study employs an exposure research design that exploits differences in regional manufacturing specialisation across French départements combined with an instrumental variable strategy. The analysis does not establish a connection between German import competition and differential changes in regional French manufacturing employment. This result suggests that German import competition has neither driven nor halted the overall decline of French manufacturing employment. It also indicates that the sizeable and long-lasting negative regional employment effects of trade between China and developed countries do not necessarily generalise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of International Business Studies is the property of Springer Nature 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.)

International trade has undergone rapid changes in the last decades. Eastern-European countries opened up and China joined the WTO. These and many other countries that initially played a minor role in international trade have now become major competitors of traditional industrial countries. This paper analyzes the impact of import competition on patent activities by Dutch manufacturing firms for the period 2000–2010. Using a combination of patent, firm, and trade data, we show that more intense import competition leads to a higher number of patent applications. It has also a positive influence on the number of forward citations and entry of new patents, and in firms entering new technology fields. In short, import competition fosters innovation. For firms only engaged in domestic innovation, this positive import competition effect is also confirmed. Whereas most studies only consider import competition from China and other emerging markets, we also take high-developed countries into account. We find that import competition from all high-wage countries as one region together has only an effect on the number of patents and patent quality. But there is no statistically significant influence from EU member states, China, or the group of countries in the rest of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the impact of trade liberalisation on female workers in manufacturing using arguably exogenous variation in Indonesia's tariff reductions in the 1990s and 2000s. This study utilises output and input tariff changes to examine two different channels through which trade liberalisation affects women's employment: import competition and imported goods. Our results confirm the findings of previous literature that showed that increased competition driven by a reduction in output tariffs encourages women's employment; however, we also provide new evidence that shows that a reduction in input tariffs may hurt women's employment. We surmise that the latter is driven by importing firms' shifting demands for skilled workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the gendered labor market and demographic effects of trade liberalization in Peru. To identify these effects, we use variation in the exposure of local labor markets to import competition from China based on their baseline industrial composition. On average, the increase in Chinese imports during 1998–2008 led to a persistent decline in the employment share of low-educated female workers but had smaller and transitory effects on the employment of low-educated men. In contrast to the predictions of Becker's model of household specialization, we find that the increase in import competition during this period increased the share of single low-educated people and decreased their marriage rates. There is little evidence that import competition affected fertility decisions. The results highlight the role of gains from joint consumption in marriage formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Nankai Business Review is the property of Nankai Business Review Editorial Office 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 studies whether firms employing immigrant workers are more resilient to an increase in competition in their export markets. Exploiting the surge of Chinese imports following its accession to the World Trade Organization and using a sample of French manufacturing exporters from 2002 to 2015, we find that an increase in the growth rate of Chinese competition in a foreign market has a negative effect on both the two-year survival and growth rate of sales of French exporters on that foreign market. This negative effect on firm performance is mitigated by the employment of immigrant workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assess the impact of a rapid rise in Japanese import competition on the growth in racial earnings and employment gaps during the 1970s and 80s. Using commuting zone level variation in exposure, we find Japanese competition led to a decrease in manufacturing employment and labour force participation for blacks. This was driven by a shift in demand for skill in manufacturing. The difference in effects between the 10th percentile most and least exposed commuting zone was equivalent to 36–46% of the relative rise in black non-labour force participation, and 78–96% of the relative decline in black median male earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of import competition on energy efficiency among firms in China. Using a difference-in-differences approach that exploits industry- and firm-level tariff reductions following China's accession to the WTO, we examine the effects of reduced output tariffs on coal intensity, measured as coal use per output, of Chinese manufacturing firms. Our findings indicate that higher levels of import competition lead to significant reductions in coal intensity, without negatively affecting firm production levels. We also find evidence that these effects are primarily driven by multi-product firms adjusting their product mix to prioritize energy-saving options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By exploiting spatial variation in import exposure arising from initial differences in industry specialization, we analyze how local labor markets in Mexico adjusted to increased Chinese‐import competition over different time horizons. The initial adjustment to the shock took various forms: a decline in the number of wage employees, a substitution of wage employees with piece‐rate or outsourced workers, and a substitution of formal employees with informal employees. The negative effects on employment were mainly associated with job destruction from exiting firms, particularly those that were small and medium‐sized. During periods in which employment fell, the population that actively participated in the labor force fell. The negative short‐ and medium‐run effects mostly disappeared after 20 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study how different types of import competition affect firm productivity using firm‐product data from German manufacturing (2000–2014). Competition from high‐income countries causes affected domestic firms to increase their productivity and lower their prices. Oppositely, import competition from low‐wage countries does not lead to firm productivity gains. Instead, domestic firms' sales and input usage decline. Our findings confirm the intuition of ladder models that the effect of competition depends on the "closeness" of competitors. They are in line with widespread X‐inefficiencies throughout the economy, which firms reduce in response to competition from high‐income countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether the impact of trade shocks on employment and wages persists across generations. Using survey data with retrospective information on parental employment and instrumental variables, we study the effect of increased Chinese import competition in Brazilian industries on individuals with differently exposed fathers. Results show that several years after the shock, children of more exposed fathers have lower education and earnings, lower chances of formal jobs, and are more likely to rely on social assistance. These effects are substantially stronger for children from disadvantaged background, indicating that the shock had a negative impact on intergenerational mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of trade on environmental performance has recently become a hot topic. However, little is known about whether import trade affects the energy use of developing countries. Therefore, we use detailed micro-firm data on China's manufacturing sector to investigate the impact of import competition on firms' coal energy intensity. We measure the degree of import competition by import penetration and estimate firm-level data for 2001–2010 using a fixed effects model and 2SLS strategy. The findings suggest that import competition significantly reduces coal energy intensity for Chinese firms, which implies that increasing imports will make it easier for China to meet the objective of "carbon peaking, carbon neutral". By decomposing import competition, we find that differences in the sources of import competition can explain decline changes in firm energy intensity. The theoretical framework and mechanism tests show that the improvement of production and technology application efficiency are the main channels through which import competition decreases energy intensity. However, there is no evidence that import competition has driven firm green transformation process. Finally, we constructed an industry correlation index using the input–output relationship between industries to confirm that import competition affects the energy intensity of near-neighbor industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the importance of international patenting in understanding technology diffusion across countries, it is unclear how business locations affect firms' international patenting behavior. This paper investigates the impact of business locations on international patenting using data from the Management, Organization and Innovation survey 2009 with a representative sample of 1508 firms from twelve countries. Several findings emerge from our analyses. First, firms outsourcing abroad tend to patent abroad but not at home. Second, firms are more likely to patent at home when facing foreign competitors. Third, when facing domestic competitors, firms are less likely to apply for patents. These findings imply that firms use patents to compete against foreign competitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use the China shock in Brazil as a quasi-natural experiment to revisit the impact of trade on firm productivity, innovation, and employment. The results corroborate some of the key findings of trade liberalization literature of the 1990s, pointing to a positive although modest effect of trade on productivity. They also point to relatively modest job losses. They raise questions, though, about the effects on innovation, contradicting the positive estimates of the 1990s. This mismatch between productivity and innovation questions the ability of trade policy to deliver sustainable productivity growth on its own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effect of increased competition from imports on the productivity of firms. It proposes an empirical model that estimates productivity from sales revenue. The model addresses concerns associated with unobserved prices and demand conditions in revenue productivity. Unlike De Loecker (Econometrica 79(5):1407–1451, 2011), the model builds on recent evidence on the effect of exporting on firm-level prices by distinguishing between the export and domestic demand markets and integrating both in the supply function of firms. It applies this framework to study the effect that tariffs reduction on EU imports had on the efficiency of manufacturing firms in Hungary during the period 1996–2003, and finds that a 10-percentage point reduction in import tariffs on similar products manufactured by a firm raises the firm's productivity by 1.40%. This is in contrast to 2.35% when revenue productivity is used. The proposed model provides a simple framework that improves productivity estimates from sales data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why has private sector union participation fallen away so much in the United States since the late 1950s? Featuring an improved dataset on National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) representation elections, I present evidence that import penetration accounts for approximately 40 percent of the decline in union formation for U.S. manufacturing. This estimate translates to 4.6 percent of the decline in private sector union density. The effect is driven by trade with low-income countries and, to some extent, other high-income countries. China is not a factor early on, but their strong import growth since 2000 can account for about 12 percentage points of the total decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigated whether import quality affects wages paid by sectors facing import competition in Brazil from 1997 to 2016. First, we estimated a fixed effects model and, then, an unconditional quantile regression. We found that the quality of imports positively impacts Brazilian wages and that import quality affects wage bands differently in Brazil. In addition, we determined that the quality of imports originated in poorer economies has a slightly greater effect on wages in respect of richer countries. We concluded that, to fight international competition, local firms might improve product quality by hiring skilled workers, who earn more, and that the raise in the wage bill varies depending on the exporter income

This article leverages individual-level panel data on nationalist attitudes to contribute to the debate on the (economic) roots of popular opposition to globalization. We propose a 'nationalist backlash' hypothesis: Individuals living in regions suffering from stronger import competition form more nationalist attitudes as part of a broad counter-reaction to globalization. Analyzing data from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS), we document not only a decrease in support for EU membership but also a general shift towards more nationalist attitudes among respondents from regions exposed to higher imports from low-wage countries—in particular, China. We thus uncover a direct individual-level response to import shocks in the form of rising nationalist attitudes that helps to explain these shocks' aggregate electoral consequences in terms of increased vote shares for the radical right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adopts five dimensions and 15 indexes of green development, people's life, innovation ability, economic vitality and coordinated development to establish an evaluation system of high-quality economic development. It uses principal component analysis to measure the economic high-quality development of 233 prefecture-level cities from 2003 to 2016, and empirically studies the impact of import sophistication on China's high-quality economic development. The results show that the increase in the sophistication of imported technology can significantly promote the high-quality development of the regional economy, and this effect is applicable to both imported intermediate and final products. In regions with higher and lower levels of economic development, eastern areas, and regions with high-quality development above 90% quantiles, the increase in imported technology content can significantly drive the high-quality development of the local economy. However, it has a great negative impact on the areas with a high-quality development index below 10% quantile. The robustness and endogeneity check support the above viewpoint. Further mechanism analysis shows that the final product import competition and intermediate product import spillover play a mediating role in the process of import sophistication affecting the high-quality economic development. The conclusion of this paper has important theoretical value and practical significance for the use of import trade to achieve high-quality economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do imports from China affect local labour markets in Japan? We examine this question using commuting zones as regional units and analysing shock propagation through supply chains and co‐location patterns. Applying the method proposed by Autor et al. (American Economic Review, 103, 2121, 2013) and Acemoglu, Autor et al. (Journal of Labor Economics, 34, S141, 2016), we examine the impact of import shocks on regional manufacturing employment using input–output tables which allows us to investigate the propagation of shocks to both upstream and downstream industries and to relate the regional impact to industry co‐location patterns. We find that the negative direct effect on local employment is underestimated in previous studies that do not consider the regional propagation of the shock through supply chains, especially the positive shock to downstream industries. Downstream industries in Japan, for example, significantly benefit from imports from China as they lower input prices and increase employment. In contrast to downstream industries, we find no significant impact on upstream industries. Our results imply that the direct negative effect on local labour markets is somewhat mitigated by effects on downstream industries within the same region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents the effects of increased import competition from China on the Italian labor market. In line with recent studies, we take two complementary approaches and study both the effects on local labor markets and on manufacturing workers. Our analysis shows that the Italian local labor markets which were more exposed to Chinese trade by means of their industry composition ended up suffering larger manufacturing and overall employment losses. Nevertheless, back‐of‐the‐envelope calculations suggest that the aggregate effect on total manufacturing employment is modest. At the individual level, contrary to what has been documented for many developed countries, workers initially employed in more exposed manufacturing industries did not suffer long‐term losses in terms of lower earnings or more discontinuous careers. While they were indeed less likely than other similar workers to continue working in manufacturing, they were also able to carry out successful transitions toward the non‐tradable sector, in other areas with better job opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how the product mixes of Japanese manufacturing plants have been impacted by the rise of China imports over the period 1997–2014. It focuses on the way plants are embedded in their local environment mitigates this causal relationship. We find evidence that China import competition induced both product downsizing and product exit within Japanese manufacturing plants. Moreover, we find that those negative effects differ across plants according to various plant characteristics including the spatial organization of their parent firm, and the degree of their exposure to external agglomeration economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Technology Economics is the property of Chinese Society of Technology Economics 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 study empirically investigates the effect of import competition on within‐firm employment reorganisation using a Japanese firm‐level dataset covering the period of 1997–2014. Moreover, this study examines whether the import competition against low‐income countries leads to a shift from a manufacturing activity to non‐manufacturing activity, such as headquarters' services, wholesale, retail or R&D. Furthermore, this study explored the heterogeneity of the impacts of import competition according to firm size. Findings reveal that competition from Chinese imports induces manufacturing firms to increase the share of service workers, particularly workers that engage in wholesale, retail and other service activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We test whether the economic effects of globalization change the social and political attitudes of white Americans. Specifically, we examine the effect of a local labor market's exposure to import competition brought about by the rapid changes in the Chinese economy from 1990 to 2007 on perceptions of immigrants, minorities, religion and guns. We do not find meaningful changes in aggregate attitudes. Instead, using detailed information from the General Social Survey, we find evidence of significant hardening of existing attitudes or "clinging" to long‐standing beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how foreign competition impacts the capital structure of domestic firms. While existing literature reveals that import competition is associated with a decrease in domestic firms' leverage, we propose a novel perspective concerning the positive effect of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) on leverage. FDI competition can boost demand for debt via productivity spillover to domestic firms, and also increase supply of debt by inducing lenders to herd toward foreign investors. Using Chinese firm-level data, we find that the positive effects of industry inward FDI on domestic firms' leverage are more pronounced in high-tech industries, industries with higher productivity growth, and industries where foreign investors exhibit a higher degree of herding behavior. Our instrument variable approach, employing industry exchange rates and import tariffs, supports these findings. Additionally, we reveal that the positive effect of FDI on local firms' leverage is amplified when the firms have stronger absorptive capacities, receive foreign capital, and experience more human capital transfers from foreign rivals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Economic Science / Jingji Kexue is the property of Economic Science Editorial Office 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.)

Price inflation in the U.S. has been slow to pick up in the last two decades. We show that this missing inflation can be traced to a growing disconnect between unemployment and core goods inflation. We exploit rich industry‐level data to show that weakening pass‐through from wages to prices in the goods‐producing sector is an important source of the slow inflation pickup. We develop a theory where markups and pass‐through depend on firms' market shares and show that increased import competition and rising market concentration reduce pass‐through from wages to prices. We find strong empirical support for these predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to use China’s World Trade Organization accession as a quasi-natural experiment and examine whether conglomeration affects firmss’ ability to respond to a significant increase in competitive pressure. Conglomerate segments have higher sales growth and higher profitability than singlesegment firms, when they face intensified import competition. Conglomerates’ outperformance is not observed when the markets in which segments operate already have high product market competition. Overall, conglomeration encourages competitiveness, and internal resources are allocated to relatively competitive segments.

This paper studies the impact of import competition from China on labor outcomes in the Peruvian manufacturing sector in 2001–2010. Using data from the Peruvian Household Survey, we use a two-step procedure to evaluate the impact of the surge in imports from China on the likelihood of having an informal job and on wages in both the formal and informal sectors. On the first step, the results suggest that greater import competition increased—albeit weakly—the likelihood of having an informal job for workers with elementary education. On the second step, we find that the surge in imports from China was detrimental to wages of the least educated individuals with informal jobs—with no education and elementary education—, although we also find that this result is mostly driven by the presence of self-employed among informal workers. We also observe a wage increase among workers with formal jobs and elementary and high school education. These results are robust to the inclusion of different exclusion restrictions and even after accounting for industry-level growth which was strong during the period studied.

This paper studies the effect of export expansion on the US labour market over the last two decades. Exploiting foreign emerging markets' unilateral liberalisation, this paper provides new empirical evidence for the importance of export expansion to the US labour market at the industry level. Using a novel instrumental variable strategy, the result confirms that US exports played a critical role in supporting manufacturing employment. Reduced‐form estimates imply that US exports to different markets created more than 1.6 million manufacturing jobs between 1991 and 2007, which is comparable to the estimated job losses attributed to the import competition from China. Meanwhile, there is substantial heterogeneity in this positive employment effect across export destinations and industries. Industries not only respond differently to various export shocks, but could also experience differential employment growth facing the same export shock. I find that the job creation effect is larger for industries with a higher initial share of workers who are older, less‐educated or non‐white, and performing routine‐based tasks. In addition, the effect is more pronounced for industries that had higher labour market concentration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A rise in import competition can put downward pressure on local prices increasing consumer's welfare, but these gains might be unequal across households depending on the basket of goods consumed. Using a consumer price index that varies at the product and city level from Mexico, this paper analyses the impact of import competition from low‐wage countries, and particularly China, on price growth between 2002 and 2017. I find that the trade shock impacted prices. Had import competition remained unchanged, the 15‐year change in the consumer price index would have been seven percentage points higher, on average across all goods, with a much larger impact on the products highly exposed to the import competition. Second, using microdata from a household expenditure survey I find that all the households benefited from this access to cheaper goods, but the low‐income households benefited more. Finally, I show that the China shock only had a small effect on the evolution of the per capita expenditure inequality observed during this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the relationship between import competition and firm‐level markups by examining the imports of intermediate and final goods. Using a rich firm‐level dataset of French food companies from 2001 to 2013, we find that, on average, increased final goods import competition (intermediate inputs) is negatively (positively) associated with firm‐level markups. These results are consistent with the trade models that predict the pro‐competitive effects of trade and the incomplete cost pass‐through to prices. Importantly, the reduction in markups due to the pro‐competitive effect of trade tends to be counterbalanced by the increase in markups induced by incomplete pass‐through. Our empirical analysis uncovers considerable heterogeneity in the effects of output and input import competition on markups. Our results particularly reveal that firm size and industry market structure (i.e. concentration) are key determinants of how firm‐level markups respond to import competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]