scholarly journals Natural disasters and trade: the mitigating impact of port substitution

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 809-856 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masashige Hamano ◽  
Wessel N Vermeulen

Abstract We study the effect of natural disasters on port-level exports. We model the interaction between firms and ports to study how strongly exports from one port are affected by changes in the cost of exporting at neighboring ports. We extend the standard trade model with heterogeneous firms to a multiple port structure where exporting is subject to port specific local transportation costs, port specific fixed export costs and international bilateral trade costs. We show that gravity distortion due to firm heterogeneity is conditional on the comparative advantage at the port level and resulting substitution of exports across ports. We present evidence of the substitution effect using the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, indicating that at least 40% of exports was substituted to other ports following the disaster. The substitution effect is the strongest in technology intensive product categories, which suggests an interaction between supply chains and domestic trade costs.

2009 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 258-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey J. Reimer ◽  
Man Li

We examine how changes in yield variability affect the welfare of cereal grain and oilseed buyers and producers around the world. We simulate trade patterns and welfare for 21 countries with a Ricardian trade model that incorporates bilateral trade costs and crop yield distributions. The model shows that world trade volumes would need to increase substantially if crop yield variability were to rise. Net welfare effects, however, are moderate so long as countries do not resort to policies that inhibit trade, such as export restrictions or measures to promote self-sufficiency in crops. Low-income countries suffer the most from increases in yield variability, due to higher bilateral trade costs and lower-than-average productivity.


Author(s):  
Alan Spearot

While the modern theory of international trade allows for many different modeling assumptions, the gains from trade can often be calculated using a common set of statistics. In particular, the share of a country’s output that is consumed domestically, the elasticity of bilateral trade with respect to trade costs, and the relationship between markups and firm size, each have a clear role in the gains from integration. All of these statistics may also be structurally linked to the degree of firm heterogeneity, usually the dispersion in firm-level productivity. Accordingly, the presence of firm heterogeneity may have a meaningful impact on the welfare response to trade liberalization. A quantitative application of a common firm heterogeneity model indicates that increased dispersion of firm-level productivity has a disproportionately large and positive impact on the gains from trade for smaller, less-developed countries.


Author(s):  
Jihyun Eum ◽  
Ian Sheldon ◽  
Stanley Thompson

AbstractIn this article, the reasons why developing countries trade fewer agricultural products than developed countries are analyzed. Based on earlier findings that low trade volume in the agricultural sector is due to high trade costs, the focus is on evaluating the extent to which bilateral trade costs in the agricultural sector differ among trading partners. Using a neo-Ricardian trade model, the results show that systematically, asymmetric bilateral trade costs and variation in the level of agricultural productivity across all countries in the sample, are the main barriers to developing countries’ agricultural exports. In addition, low-income countries face higher trade costs to export than do high-income countries.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4279
Author(s):  
Youngho Chang ◽  
Phoumin Han

This study examines whether and how harnessing more wind energy can decrease the cost of meeting the demand for electricity and amount of carbon emissions in the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region, using the ASEAN integrated electricity trade model. Three scenarios are considered: a counterfactual business-as-usual (BAU) scenario, which assumes no wind energy is used; an actual BAU scenario that uses the wind-generation capacity in 2018; and a REmap scenario, which employs the wind-generation capacity from the Renewable Energy Outlook for ASEAN. Simulation results suggest that dispatching more wind energy decreases the cost of meeting the demand for electricity and amount of carbon emissions. However, these emissions increase during the late years of the study period, as the no- or low-emitting energy-generation technologies are crowded out.


Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 1106
Author(s):  
Jaewon Jung

Though the importance of organizational behavior and human decision processes within firms for the firm performance has largely been recognized in the business and management literature, much less attention has been devoted to studying such implications in the international trade context. This paper develops a general-equilibrium trade model in which heterogeneous workers make an investment decision in acquiring advanced managerial skills and choose their optimal effort level based on their comparative advantage. In doing so, we show how globalization-induced human capital accumulation within firms leads to sustainable economic growth. We also show that workers’ organizational belief and CEO’s managerial vision may be an important element for the human capital formation within firms and for the performance of firms in a global economy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 280-292
Author(s):  
Anisul M. Islam

Bangladesh and India are two neighbouring countries in South Asia having strong political, diplomatic, trade and economic ties with each other. This article reviews and updates on the inter- and intra-industry trade relationship between these two countries using more recent data. More specifically, it examines the relative position of the two countries in global trade followed by trends and patters of bilateral trade using aggregative data. At a disaggregate level, the commodity composition of Bangladesh exports to and imports from India by major product categories is examined focusing on the revealed comparative advantage (RCA) to review and update the degree of inter-industry trade. Further, the Grubel–Lloyd index (GLI; Grubel & Lloyd, 1975 ) is examined to measure the degree of intra-industry trade by major commodity groups. The article finds that India has a much stronger relative position in the global trade vis-à-vis Bangladesh. India is also found to dominate Bangladesh in bilateral trade, resulting in a very large and persistent trade deficit of Bangladesh with India. At a disaggregated level, the article finds that India has a comparative advantage in more products than Bangladesh and that the GLI shows that the degree of intra-industry trade is almost negligible between the two countries.


2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew B. Bernard ◽  
J. Bradford Bradford Jensen ◽  
Peter K. Schott

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-37
Author(s):  
Alena Dorakh

Despite recent concerns about the increasing influence of outside investors on the European Union (EU) and Western Balkans, the developed European countries are still a dominant source of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the region, confirming the benefits of EU membership. At the same time, fast-growing connectivity and lower trade costs in accession and neighboring countries determine the FDI growth from China, particularly via the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). By applying panel data over 2000-2019 for 34 countries, which form 89% of all European FDI, we first examine FDI patterns around Europe, compare the EU, NMS, and Western Balkans; verify the importance of EU membership for FDI, caused reducing trade costs and improving connectivity. Thus, the new EU member states (NMS) and Western Balkans appear both as a home country and as a pre- entry destination to the EU. Then, we calculate trade costs indices for each selected country and partners over time and find that Europe and China are closely interconnected through trade and FDI. It means that stronger ties with China can be realized for the sample countries at the cost of easing relations with the EU. Finally, incorporating trade costs indices into the FDI model; we evaluate the impact of connectivity on FDI and estimate how BRI affected FDI in Europe. Additionally, we validate that the old framework of horizontal and vertical FDI not representative well and even new complex vertical or export-oriented FDI strategies are shifting today.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 286-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Osborne

This paper estimates a cost-of-living index using a dynamic structural model for two storable product categories. In each category, regime shifts to higher or lower retail prices are observed. Fixed-base indexes do a poor job of capturing changes in welfare after a regime shift, and deviate from the dynamic index by as much as 300 percent. I evaluate the extent to which two recently proposed indexes can approximate the model-derived index. These indexes improve welfare measurement and are straightforward to compute. The category’s competitive structure and features of the regime shift determine which of the two provides a better approximation. (JEL C43, C51, E31, L11)


Author(s):  
Xin-tong Li ◽  
Fatemeh Mokhtarzadeh ◽  
G. Cornelisvan Kooten

Abstract A gravity trade model can be used to determine the effects of policy on bilateral trade flows. The gravity model is initially explained and then used to determine the effect that U.S. tariffs have on softwood lumber (SWL) imports from Canada, using information from the 2006 Softwood Lumber Agreement. Quarterly data for seven Canadian and three U.S. regions for the period 2007-2017 are used to estimate a gravity model of SWL trade. The model is subsequently expanded to include Japan and China as separate regions, and then as a combined China-Japan region. The model is estimated using OLS and a Poisson Pseudo-Maximum-Likelihood method for trade quantity and value. Findings indicate that: (1) the imposition of a countervailing and/or anti-dumping duty usually has a negative effect on Canada's physical exports, but not in all cases; (2) the value of softwood lumber trade decreases by 26% on average under a tax/tariff compared with no duties; (3) the tax/tariff has a smaller but still significant impact on Canadian exports when China and Japan are included, as SWL exports are diverted from the U.S.; and, not surprisingly, (4) duties affect the value of lumber exports to a much greater extent than quantity.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document