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How and why do the policy areas covered in World Bank loan conditions change over time and across borrowers? We hypothesize that shifts in the Bank’s economic research and policy priorities influence Bank loan conditions, even after controlling for country characteristics and international political aspects. To test this claim we apply keyword-assisted topic models to the analysis of over 13,000 World Bank policy loan conditions and close to 35,000 World Bank research papers published between 1985 and 2014. Contrary to the criticism levelled against the Bank that changes in research and policy priorities are mostly rhetorical and have little substantive effect on Bank lending, we find that internal research and policy priority shifts explain the conditions in a Bank loan at least as well as more traditional donor or borrower-specific measures central to IPE models of Bank lending.

Why do some countries run persistent current account surpluses? Why do others run deficits, often over decades, leading to enduring global imbalances? Such persistent imbalances are the root cause of many financial crises and a major source of international economic conflict. We propose that differences in wage-bargaining institutions explain a large share of imbalances through their effect on the trade balance. In countries with coordinated wage bargaining, wage growth in export industries can be restrained to ensure competitiveness, leading to persistent trade surpluses. We estimate the contribution of these institutions to trade balances in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries since 1977 and find ample support for our hypothesis. Contrary to much of the literature, the choice of fixed or floating exchange rate regimes has only a small effect on trade or current account balances. In other words, internal adjustment in surplus countries via wage-bargaining institutions trumps external adjustment by deficit countries.

For decades, Japanese outward foreign direct investment has exceeded the flow of foreign capital into the country. Policies and regulations restricted inward investment, while the foreign earnings of Japanese companies were recycled into investment abroad. Today, official policy has reversed to try to encourage greater inflows, but Japan does not attract much FDI. Following an overview of the trends of Japanese FDI, this chapter surveys the considerable official efforts to protect the interests of Japanese multinational firms abroad, particularly in the form of investment chapters in trade agreements and free-standing international investment agreements. It then analyzes recent attempts at reducing barriers to inward investment in Japan under Abenomics. Much suggests that these efforts do not spur on significant inflows. The conundrum of the Japanese government may be that the policy regime cannot by itself counter the diminishing economic attractiveness of Japan for foreign firms.

Why do household saving rates differ so much across countries? This micro-level question has global implications: countries that systematically “over-save” export capital by running current account surpluses. In recipient countries, interest rates are therefore too low and financial stability is put at risk. Existing theories argue that saving is precautionary; however tests of these theories are limited to cross-country comparisons and the results are mixed. We report the findings of an original survey experiment. Using a simulated financial saving task implemented online, we compare the saving preferences of a large and diverse sample of Chinese-Canadians with other Canadians. This comparison is instructive given that Chinese-Canadians migrated from, or descend from those who migrated from, a high-saving environment to a low-saving, high-debt environment. We also compare behavior in the presence and absence of a simulated “welfare state”, which we represent in the form of mandatory insurance. Our respondents exhibit behavior in the saving task that corresponds to standard economic assumptions about lifecycle savings and risk-aversion. We find strong evidence that precautionary saving is reduced when a mandatory insurance is present, but no sign that Chinese cultural influences, represented in either linguistic or ethnic terms, have any effect on saving behavior. Overall, the results suggest that Chinese “over-saving” is likely to be addressed when more generous welfare state policies are put in place.

The international regime for the promotion and protection of foreign investment consists of a multitude of close to 3,000 bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and related international investment a...

In this paper, we investigate the causes and consequences of institutional design choices in the liberalization of services trade and investment in preferential trade agreements (PTAs). We distinguish between a positive-list and a negative-list approach to services liberalization, and analyze PTAs signed by countries of the Asia-Pacific. We develop an information-based argument that explains why these different types induce path dependence in subsequent choices, and derive hypotheses that capture the “history” effect of choosing either institutional model. In doing so, we examine whether particular “modes of governance” diffuse through the growing network of trade agreements through the adoption of rules by third parties in their own PTAs. The empirical analysis tests these hypotheses using simulation-based dynamic network analysis methods. We find evidence of strong path dependence in the choice of liberalization approach, affecting the evolution of PTA networks in the Asia-Pacific and the diffusion of services liberalization in general. Such path dependence has long-term consequences for the institutional features of the international trade regime.

Are preferential trade agreements (PTAs) in the Asia-Pacific region merely a political phenomenon with no economic basis, as some critics say? I challenge this interpretation; in this article I present an explanatory model based on intra-industry trade to indicate what economic interests should drive Japanese and South Korean PTAs with ASEAN partners, and derive specific predictions. An analysis of the actual tariff barrier elimination in the agreements suggests important, but highly specific, economic benefits. First, preference margins are substantively greater for intra-industry trade, and second, intra-industry trade is much less likely to be excluded from tariff reductions when imported into Japan or South Korea. This indicates that PTAs help firms specialize their production throughout the region, and provides an economic rationale for these agreements. A qualitative case study of the Japan-Malaysia PTA and a statistical analysis of tariff liberalization in the PTAs of Japan and South Korea with the ASEAN countries support this view.

The proliferation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and the wave of democratization are among the most significant developments in international relations during the past three decades. The correlation between these is well noted. The causal link between these phenomena, however, remains unclear. On one hand, democracies have been found to be more likely to join PTAs. On the other hand, trade agreements should foster democratization because they undermine the ability of governments to distribute rents to maintain an autocratic regime. If PTAs and democracy coevolve through a selection and a contagion effect, then conventional statistical techniques can produce wholly misleading results. This article presents a new approach based on recent advancements in longitudinal network analysis. Our findings confirm that historically, democratization indeed made states more likely to sign PTAs, but that trade agreements also encourage the democratization of a country, in particular if the PTA partners are themselves democracies.

Why do developing countries negotiate North–South trade agreements, when they already enjoy preferential market access to developed-country markets? Most developing countries benefit from the generalized system of preferences (GSP) and related schemes when they export to the United States, the EU, and other developed economies. And yet, many pursue fully reciprocal agreements that require major concessions to the developed partner. We argue that this is due to the nature of the GSP as a unilateral concession that can be (and often is) taken away. High dependence on unilateral, removable preferences generates “political trade dependence” (PTD). We distinguish PTD from standard measures of trade dependence, and we explain why PTD motivates developing countries to seek North–South Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs). We show the effects of PTD with a selection of illustrative cases and test our hypothesis on a data set of EU and US trade agreements with developing countries. We find robust statistical support for our hypothesis that high and rising levels of PTD make the negotiation of a North–South RTA more likely.

Bilateral trade agreements have proliferated rapidly within the last two decades, growing into a dense network of multiple ties between countries. The spread of preferential trade agreements (PTAs), however, is not uniform: some countries have signed a multitude of deals, while others remain much less involved. This article presents a longitudinal network analysis method to analyze the patterns of the formation of trade agreements, based on the mutual codetermination of network structure and agreement formation. The findings suggest that PTAs spread endogenously because of structural arbitrage effects in the network, and that they establish a hierarchy among countries. Rich countries form ties with each other and middle-income countries, who themselves create a horizontal layer of PTAs, but least-developed countries are left behind and do not form many ties. Supplanting the multilateral trade regime with preferential agreements therefore creates a system of highly asymmetrical relationships of weaker spokes around a few hubs. © The Author(s) 2012.

Why do some countries run persistent current account surpluses? Why do others run deficits, often over decades, leading to enduring global financial imbalances? Such persistent imbalances are the root cause of many financial crises and a major source of international economic conflict. We propose that differences in wage-bargaining institutions explain a large share of imbalances through their effect on the trade balance. In countries with coordinated wage bargaining, wage growth can be restrained to ensure competitiveness, leading to long-term trade surpluses. We estimate the contribution of these institutions to trade balances in OECD member countries since 1977 and find ample support for our hypothesis. Although the introduction of the euro has clearly exacerbated the problem, no substantial difference otherwise exists between fixed and floating exchange rates. In other words, internal adjustment in surplus countries trumps external adjustment by deficit countries.

During the last two decades, the number of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) grew almost exponentially to over 270 by 2010. A majority of these are agreements between developed and developing countries. Existing models provide little economic rationale for these agreements, but the existing literature lumps North-South PTAs together with other types of trade pacts. This article offers an explanation focused on the movement of less capital-intensive manufacturing from North to South, which in turn stimulates the exchange of similar goods differentiated by unit value—also referred to as vertical intra-industry trade. The North exports more capitalintensive goods, while more labor-intensive goods are produced and traded by the South. This kind of specialization creates incentives for governments to support PTAs. The author tests this model using a new measure of vertical trade specialization and finds strong evidence that such specialization promotes PTA formation. North-South PTAs should therefore be seen as part of a broader shift of manufacturing from high- to middle-income countries.

G overnments liberalize international trade for a variety of economic reasons. Often, they respond to the demands of export-oriented industries (Milner 1988). At other times, they seek trade agreements because they hold causal beliefs that free trade increases the welfare of societies (Simmons and Elkins 2004). But these factors cannot explain why states would prefer preferential over multilateral or unilateral liberalization. Unilateral market-opening, although economically desirable, is rare. Without a foreign partner to offer reciprocal liberalization, governments frequently have difficulties in overcoming the resistance of domestic groups that would compete with imports. Multilateral liberalization not only embodies the sovereign equality of nation-states and “diffuse reciprocity” (Ruggie 1993), but can also be shown to increase global welfare more than preferential trade agreements under a variety of conditions (Krishna 2005). Yet the choice between different venues for liberalization is not well explored. The general trend towards PTAs has no doubt been encouraged by the ever-longer multilateral negotiating rounds. With more than 150 members, the WTO is an unwieldy organization (Mansfield and Reinhardt 2003; McLaren 2002). Since most international commerce still takes place between the “Quad,” consisting of Canada, the United States, the EU, and Japan, lately plus China, greater numbers do not automatically imply more trade. Faced with rising negotiating costs but diminishing returns to multilateral liberalization, countries may simply look for alternatives. But a general propensity to sign more PTAs does not tell us much about the choice of partners.

Since the early 1990s the world has seen an explosion of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) between North and South. Mark Manger argues that current North-South PTAs are not primarily about liberalizing exports as is usually assumed. Rather, they are driven by the needs of foreign direct investment. The interests of multinational firms in investing in developing countries converge with the desires of the host countries to attract foreign capital. Yet to be politically feasible in the developed country, North-South PTAs must discriminate against third countries. PTAs thus create a competitive dynamic between countries, as excluded firms lobby their governments to restore access to important investment locations, leading to yet more preferential agreements. Based on extensive research in Europe, Japan, and the Americas and interviews with decision-makers in governments and the private sector, this book offers a new perspective on the roles of the state and corporations in international trade.

Summary Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and investment chapters in preferential trade agreements have become popular measures to guarantee investor-friendly policies. While they reassure multinational firms, they also constrain host country authorities in regulating markets to stimulate competition. These problems are widespread in service industries characterized by significant economies of scale. This paper presents case studies of the difficulties the Chilean regulatory authorities faced in regulating the financial services, telecom, and energy industries. It concludes that able regulators are necessary, but that international agreements need to also leave enough policy space.

Why do major economic powers seek more and more free trade agreements (FTAs) with smaller partners? Recently, Japan has joined the bandwagon by signing its first bilateral FTA. The decision, highly contested domestically, represents a sea change in Japanese trade policy and a challenging case for theories of regionalism. This paper lays out a theoretical appraisal for why more and more industrialized countries join FTAs with emerging markets and illustrates the argument with an analysis of the Japanese case. The paper argues that foreign direct investment (FDI) changes the incentives for states in favour of preferential trade agreements. Increased FDI and shifts in multina- tional firm strategies increase flows of intermediate goods. As a result, firms lobby their home governments to bolster their competitive position by sign- ing preferential agreements. Yet, FTAs also discriminate against firms from third parties, motivating them to lobby for defensive agreements. The qual- itative case studies show how NAFTA discriminates against Japanese FDI in Mexico. As a result, firms began to lobby the Japanese trade bureaucracy, changing the perception of key policymakers who developed a strategy of pursuing preferential trade agreements in the Asia Pacific region, as shown in a case study of the initiative for an FTA with Thailand.