collusion collective action and protection theory and evidence this paper provides a novel explanation forthe formation of protectionist lobby groupsin imperfectly competitive sectors thelevel of collusion is shown to be a crucialdeterminant of the ability of firms tosustain lobbying we show that greatercollusion reduces firm contributionsto tariff lobbying when the governmentvalues welfare sufficiently and thecross price elasticity between the domesticand foreign goods is sufficiently high the empirical evidence from the u s supports the theory greater collusionreduces the level of pac contributions

fixing exchange rates a virtual quest for fundamentals abstract fixed exchange rates are less volatile than floating rates but the volatility of macroeconomic variables such as money and output does not change very much across exchange rate regimes this suggests that exchange rate models based only on macroeconomic fundamentals are unlikely to be very successful it also suggests that there is no clear tradeoff between reduced exchange rate volatility and macroeconomic stability

international coordination of trade and domestic policies the past half century has seen a dramatic multilateral reduction in tariff barriers under general agreement on tariffs and trade gatt negotiations however as tariff barriers have fallen attention has shifted to the use of domestic policies as secondary trade barriers a primary concern is that as countries sign trade agreements that constrain their ability to pursue trade goals through trade policy there will be unilateral incentives for governments to distort their domestic policies as a secondary means of protection 1 increasingly international trade disputes revolve around a country s use of internal regulations as a means of restricting trade the united states has successfully challenged the system of liquor taxes in both japan and korea as discriminating against imported liquor while venezuela and brazil have challenged american standards for reformulated and conventional gasoline as trade protection masquerading as environmentalism gatt contains several articles concerning the international regulation of domestic policies but the question of how to fully incorporate domestic policies within gatt negotiations and other international trade agreements remains contentious indeed at both the ministerial meeting in 1994 at the close of the uruguay round and the recent unsuccessful ministerial conference in seattle many gatt delegates renewed demands for the relationship between trade and various domestic policies e g environmental policy labor standards or competition policy to be examined despite the importance that has recently been placed on international cooperation over domestic policies no theoretical basis exists for considering how to cooperate over both trade and domestic policies within an international agreement previous papers on negotiation over two instruments of protection e g copeland 1989 1990 thomas l hungerford 1991 have assumed asymmetric limitations on cooperation i e they assume that one of the two instruments is either nonobservable or nonnegotiable this paper extends such work by investigating cooperation over two negotiable instruments of protection under symmetric limitations on cooperation and provides insight into the design of international trade agreements that incorporate cooperation over domestic policies i adopt the view that enforcement issues are central to the understanding of international cooperation one of the challenges of international cooperation is the absence of a central authority to enforce the terms of an agreement without access to an external enforcement mechanism international agreements are viable only as long as member countries view continued cooperation to be in their own self interest i e the benefits from cooperating outweigh the potential gains from cheating 2 while the gatt department of economics university of miami p o box 248126 coral gables fl 33124 e mail ederington miami edu i would like to thank bob staiger bob baldwin wolfgang keller phillip mccalman jenny minier seminar participants at the nber conference on trade the environment and natural resources and two anonymous referees for comments on earlier versions of this paper any remaining errors are of course my own for example brian r copeland 1990 examined negotiation over one trade barrier leaving a secondary trade barrier e g nontariff barriers domestic legislation etc to be set noncooperatively he shows that trade liberalization will induce substitution toward the less efficient nonnegotiable instrument of protection due to the unilateral incentives to maintain trade protection facing countries thus within a cooperative framework the two types of barriers serve as imperfect substitutes for each other 2 as stated by kenneth w dam in his review of the gatt institution the best guarantee that a commitment of any kind will be kept particularly in an international setting where courts are of limited importance and even more important marshals and jails are nonexistent is that the parties continue to view adherence to their agreement in their mutual interest thus the gatt system unlike most legal systems is not designed to exclude self help in the form of retaliation rather retaliation subjected to established procedures and kept within prescribed bounds is made the heart of the gatt system dam 1970 pp 80 81

economic determinants of free trade agreements abstract the purpose of this study is to provide the first systematic empirical analysis of the economic determinants of the formation of free trade agreements ftas and of the likelihood of ftas between pairs of countries using a qualitative choice model we develop this econometric model based upon a general equilibrium model of world trade with two factors of production two monopolistically competitive product markets and explicit intercontinental and intracontinental transportation costs among multiple countries on multiple continents the empirical model correctly predicts based solely upon economic characteristics 85 of the 286 ftas existing in 1996 among 1431 pairs of countries and 97 of the remaining 1145 pairs with no ftas

on corporate borrowing credit spreads and economic activity in emerging economies an empirical investigation abstract we document a considerable increase in foreign financing by the corporate sector in emerging economies emes since the early 2000s mainly in the form of bond issuance and claim that it has opened up an important channel by which external financial factors can drive economic activity in these economies such claim is substantiated by a strong negative relationship between economic activity and an external financial indicator that we construct for several emes using micro level data on spreads of bonds issued by emes corporations in foreign capital markets three salient features characterize such a negative relationship first the financial indicator has considerable predictive power on future economic activity in these economies even after controlling for other potential drivers of business cycles such as movements in sovereign spreads and global financial risk among others second on average an identified adverse shock to the financial indicator generates a large and protracted fall of real output growth in these economies and up to 14 of its forecast error variance is associated to this shock lastly fluctuations in this indicator also respond strongly to shocks in global financial risk emanating from world capital markets thereby implying that changes in corporate spreads also serve as a powerful propagating mechanism of the effect of changes in global investors risk appetite in emerging markets

free trade agreements in the americas are the trade effects larger than anticipated this paper argues that the competitive liberalisation of national governments of the past several decades reflects national governments expectations of larger trade impacts from regional economic integration agreements eias than typical ex ante economic models have suggested moreover we show that previous typically cross section ex post empirical evaluations of the effects of eias on trade have seriously over or underestimated the effects partly due to ignoring the endogenous self selection bias of country pairs into eias accounting for this bias we find that economic integration agreements in the americas have had much larger impacts on trade over the period 1960 2000 than previously found and the ex post estimates are less fragile than those in earlier cross section analyses the results shed further light on understanding the causes and consequences of the growth of regionalism in the world

is protection for sale evidence on the grossman helpman theory of endogenous protection grossman and helpman 1994 present a theory of endogenous protection by explicitly modeling government industry interactions for which mere black box models previously existed they obtain a ramsey pricing type solution to the provision of protection which emphasizes the role of inverse import penetration ratios and import elasticities on the lobbying side the model makes predictions about lobbying competition and lobbying spending according to deadweight costs from protection the model not only makes for richer theory in terms of rigor and elegance but its predictions are directly testable whether the grossman helman model stands up to real world data is investigated in this paper predictions from both the protection side and lobbying side are tested using cross sectional u s nontariff barrier data we also compare the second generation grossman helpman model with a more traditional specification our results call for serious consideration of this model in the political economy literature

common agency and coordination general theory and application to government policy making we develop a model of common agency with complete information and general preferences with nontransferable utility and we prove that the principals nash equilibrium in truthful strategies implements an efficient action we apply this theory to the construction of a positive model of public finance where organized special interests can lobby the government for consumer and producer taxes or subsidies and targeted lump sum taxes or transfers the lobbies use only the nondistorting transfers in their noncooperative equilibrium but their intergroup competition for transfers turns into a prisoners dilemma in which the government captures all the gain that is potentially available to the parties

estimating the effects of free trade agreements on international trade flows using matching econometrics abstract this paper provides the first cross section estimates of long run treatment effects of free trade agreements on members bilateral international trade flows using nonparametric matching econometrics our nonparametric cross section estimates of ex post long run treatment effects are much more stable across years and have more economically plausible values than corresponding ols cross section estimates from typical gravity equations we provide plausible estimates of the long run effects of membership in the original european economic community eec and the central american common market cacm between 1960 and 2000 and the estimates confirm anecdotal reports of these agreements effectiveness

long term drivers of global virtual water trade a trade gravity approach for 1965 2010 abstract in the era of globalisation over the last half century there has been an increase in the exchange of agricultural and food products this internationalisation process has led to intense environmental pressures on a global level which has been the case of water resources this paper studies the determinants of global virtual water trade flows between 1965 and 2010 using panel data techniques we have evaluated and quantified the explanatory factors of bilateral virtual water transfers between 70 countries as a result of agri food trade we have used the well known trade gravity equation to explain exchanges of water embodied in agricultural goods on the basis of economic geographical institutional and environmental factors the analysis considers economic country heterogeneity in order to evaluate how trade impacts water resources depending on different development patterns our main findings indicate that the traditional economic institutional and geographic factors played a key role as drivers of virtual water bilateral trade flows between 1965 and 2010 in addition the natural endowments also exerted a notable influence on these trends

issue linkage and issue tie in in multilateral negotiations we describe a model of international multidimensional policy coordination where countries can enter into selective and separate agreements with different partners along different policy dimensions the model is used to examine the implications of negotiation tie in the requirement that agreements must span multiple dimensions of interaction for the viability of multilateral cooperation when countries are linked by international trade flows and transboundary pollution we show that while in some cases negotiation tie in has either no effect or can make multilateral cooperation more viable in others a formal tie in constraint can make an otherwise viable joint multilateral agreement unstable

trade liberalization and environmental taxation in federal systems the literature on trade liberalization and environment has not yet considered federal structures in this paper we show how the design of environmental policy in a federal system has implications for the effects of trade reform trade liberalization leads to a decline in pollution taxes regardless of whether pollution taxes are set at the federal centralized or local decentralized level and it increases social welfare the effect under a decentralized system is smaller than if these taxes are set by the federal government and pollution emissions therefore decline in this case moreover majority bias interacts with trade liberalization if federal taxes are used

sharing a ride on the commodities roller coaster common factors in business cycles of emerging economies fluctuations in commodity prices are an important driver of business cycles in small emerging market economies emes this paper documents how these fluctuations correlate strongly with the business cycle in emes a commodity sector is then embedded into a multi country emes business cycle model where exogenous fluctuations in commodity prices follow a common dynamic factor structure and coexist with other driving forces the estimated model assigns to commodity shocks 42 percent of the variance in income of which a considerable part is linked to the common factor a further amplification mechanism is a spillover effect from commodity prices to risk premia

tfp news and sentiments the international transmission of business cycles we propose a novel identification scheme for a non technology business cycle shock that we label sentiment this is a shock orthogonal to identified surprise and news tfp shocks that maximizes the short run forecast error variance of an expectational variable alternatively a gdp forecast or a consumer confidence index we then estimate the international transmission of three identified shocks surprise tfp news of future tfp and sentiment from the us to canada the us sentiment shock produces a business cycle in the us with output hours and consumption rising following a positive shock and accounts for the bulk of short run business cycle fluctuations in the us the sentiment shock also has a significant impact on canadian macro aggregates in the short run it is more important than either the surprise or the news tfp shocks in generating business cycle comovement between the us and canada accounting for up to 50 of the forecast error variance of canadian gdp and about one third of canadian hours imports and exports the news shock is responsible for some comovement at 5 10 years and surprise tfp innovations do not generate synchronization

are regional trading arrangements trade creating an application of extreme bounds analysis in this study we use extreme bounds analysis to test the robustness of the hypothesis that regional trading arrangements rtas are trade creating extreme bounds analysis provides a more rigorous test of specification uncertainty than traditional econometric theory by incorporating prior information and using a systematic approach to testing the fragility of coefficient estimates the results show that the trade creation effect of most rtas is fragile using a least squares estimator where all weight is attached to the sampling distribution eight or more of the twelve rtas considered are found to be trade creating when the relative weight in the estimation is shifted from the sampling to the prior distribution the number of rtas that are trade creating falls to six at the 95 percent likelihood ellipsoid moreover when we specify that not all rtas are trade creating four rtas increase trade at the 95 percent likelihood ellipsoid at the extreme bounds when all weight is attached to the prior distribution none of the rtas are found to be trade creating as a result we conclude that the pervasive trade creation effect found in the literature reflects not the information content of the data but rather the unacknowledged beliefs of the researchers

external shocks u s monetary policy and macroeconomic fluctuations in emerging markets estimated structural vars show that external shocks are an important source of macroeconomic fluctuations in emerging markets furthermore u s monetary policy shocks affect interest rates and the exchange rate in a typical emerging market quickly and strongly the price level and real output in a typical emerging market respond to u s monetary policy shocks by more than the price level and real output in the u s itself these findings are consistent with the idea that when the u s sneezes emerging markets catch a cold at the same time u s monetary policy shocks are not important for emerging markets relative to other kinds of external shocks

financial stress economic activity and monetary policy in the asean 5 economies this article uses a structural vector autoregression approach to analyse the impact of financial stress on the economy and the relationship between monetary policy and financial stress in the asean 5 economies indonesia malaysia philippines singapore and thailand we find that an increase in financial stress leads to tighter credit conditions and lower economic activity in all five countries the estimated impact on the real economy displays an initial rapid decline followed by a gradual dissipation in malaysia the philippines and thailand the central banks tend to reduce policy interest rates irs when financial stress increases although there is substantial cross country variation in the magnitude and time dynamics the lower policy irs are found to have little significant effects in lowering financial stress but are still effective in stimulating economic activity through other channels these findings imply that easing monetary policy is likely necessary but insufficient to address growth s

rent seeking and market structure comment if the firms in an industry are to be successful in raising money to influence government two conditions must be met 1 there must be sufficient rents available from government decisions regarding that industry to make such expenditures worthwhile and 2 the industry must be sufficiently concentrated to avoid a free rider problem in fund raising this argument though seemingly intuitively appealing has been under recent empirical attack this paper seeks to restore the parapets

real exchange rate monetary policy and the u s economy evidence from a favar model this paper examines the effects of exchange rate depreciation to the u s economy in a factor augmented vector autoregression model using monthly data of 148 variables for the post bretton woods period of 1973 2017 exchange rate shock is identified to reflect exogenous disturbances to the foreign exchange market and movements in exchange rate that are not accounted for by changes in the u s monetary policy we find that depreciation is expansionary and inflationary to the broad u s economy the current account improves over time conforming to the j curve theory and monetary policy is leaning against the wind jel e3 e5 f31 f32 f41

invoice currency choice nonlinearities and exchange rate pass through estimating time varying thresholds as a proxy for exporter s predicted exchange rates this study proposes a new approach to analyse possible asymmetric behaviour of exchange rate pass through erp

openness specialization and the external vulnerability of developing countries deepening real and financial integration of developing countries into the world economy has prompted renewed interest in the contribution of external shocks to their macroeconomic fluctuations this paper revisits the issue using four decades of annual data for a large sample of developing countries the paper implements a conditionally homogeneous panel vector autoregression with exogenous variables to model gdp fluctuations in these countries it uses sign restrictions to identify four external structural shocks demand supply monetary and commodity shocks and analyzes how their impact on growth is shaped by countries policy and structural framework external shocks are found to account for a small share of the forecast error variance of gdp especially at short horizons however their contribution has been on the rise in recent decades further global monetary shocks have become the leading external source of gdp volatility in developing countries the paper presents a quantitative assessment of the effects of real and financial opening up as well as those of commodity specialization on the impact of external shocks on gdp the results suggest that increasing openness can account for the increasing trend in the volatility attributable to external shocks as well as the changing roles of different shocks moreover commodity intensive developing countries are found to be more vulnerable than the rest to all types of external shocks not just commodity shocks

trade transboundary pollution and foreign lobbying in this paper we explore the use of trade policy in addressing transboundary stock pollution problems such as acid rain and water pollution we show that a tariff determined by the current level of accumulated pollution can induce the time path of emissions optimal for the downstream polluted country but if the upstream polluting country can lobby the downstream government to impose lower tariffs distortions brought by corruption and foreign lobbying lead to a rise in the upstream country s social welfare and to a decrease in social welfare in the downstream country thus the usefulness of trade policy as a tool for encouraging cooperation and internalizing transboundary externalities depends critically on the degree of governments susceptibility to foreign political influence

the transmission of us systemic financial stress evidence for emerging market economies abstract we provide empirical evidence that us systemic financial stress shocks us sfsss are an important driver of economic dynamics and fluctuations in emes applying a structural vector autoregression we analyze the international transmission of us sfsss to eight emes using monthly data from 1999 to 2012 us sfsss are identified as unexpected changes in the financial conditions index of the federal reserve bank of chicago findings indicate that a typical emerging market real economy experiences similar negative effects to those seen in the us real economy in response to us sfsss for international transmission our results emphasize that financial interconnectedness with the us is important relative to trade relations the analyzed cases of latin american economies suggest that indirect linkages are also important for transmitting the negative effects of us sfsss in general us sfsss act as a crucial driver of volatility in the emerging world also at business cycle frequencies

to bi or not to bi differences between spillover estimates from bilateral and multilateral multi country models abstract asymptotic analysis and monte carlo simulations show that spillover estimates obtained from widely used bilateral such as two country var models are in general less accurate both in terms of bias and mean squared error than those obtained from multilateral such as global var models in particular the accuracy of spillover estimates obtained from bilateral models depends on two aspects of economies integration with the rest of the world first accuracy worsens as direct bilateral transmission channels become less important for example when the spillover sender accounts only for a small share of the spillover recipient s overall integration with the rest of the world second accuracy worsens as indirect higher order spillovers and spillbacks become more important for example when the spillover recipient is more integrated with the rest of the world overall empirical evidence on the global output spillovers from us monetary policy is consistent with these generic results spillover estimates obtained from two country var models are systematically smaller than those obtained from a global var model and the differences between spillover estimates obtained from two country var models and a global var model are more pronounced for economies for which the us accounts for a smaller share of their overall trade and financial integration with the rest of the world and for economies which are more integrated with the rest of the world overall

one money one market the effect of common currencies on trade currency unions their dramatic effect on international trade a gravity model is used to assess the separate effects of exchange rate volatility and currency unions on international trade the panel data bilateral observations for five years during 1970 90 covering 186 countries includes 300 observations in which both countries use the same currency i find a large positive effect of a currency union on international trade and a small negative effect of exchange rate volatility even after controlling for a host of features including the endogenous nature of the exchange rate regime these effects statistically significant imply that two countries sharing the same currency trade three times as much as they would with different currencies currency unions like the european emu may thus lead to a large increase in international trade with all that that entails andrew rose

general equilibrium treatment effects a study of tuition policy this paper defines and estimates general equilibrium treatment effects the conventional approach in the literature on treatment effects ignores interactions among individuals induced by the policy interventions being studied focusing on the impact of tuition policy and using estimates from our dynamic overlapping generations general equilibrium model of capital and human capital formation we find that general equilibrium impacts of tuition on college enrollment are an order of magnitude smaller than those reported in the literature on microeconomic treatment effects the assumptions used to justify the late parameter in a partial equilibrium setting do not hold in a general equilibrium setting policy changes induce two way flows we extend the late concept to a general equilibrium setting we present a more comprehensive evaluation to program evaluation by considering both the tax and benefit consequences of the program being evaluated and placing the analysis in a market setting this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

refuting two claims about virtual water trade abstract using the heckscher ohlin trade model i refute two prominent but incorrect claims on virtual water trade these claims are that virtual water trade i levels uneven water distribution and ii reduces the potential for water conflict both claims are based on an incorrect understanding of comparative advantage in the production of water intensive goods the results show that both claims only hold under certain conditions but do not necessarily follow from the heckscher ohlin trade model

global spillover effects of us uncertainty abstract spillover effects of us uncertainty shocks are studied in a panel var of fifteen emerging market economies emes a us uncertainty shock negatively affects eme stock prices and exchange rates raises eme country spreads and decreases capital inflows into them it decreases eme output and consumer prices while increasing net exports negative effects on output and asset prices are weaker but effects on external balance stronger for latin american emes we attribute such heterogeneity to differential eme monetary policy response to us uncertainty shocks analysis of central bank minutes shows latin american emes pay less attention to smoothing capital flows

monetary news in the united states and business cycles in emerging economies abstract this paper identifies anticipated news and unanticipated surprise shocks to the u s fed funds rate using fed funds futures contracts and assesses their propagation to emerging economies anticipated shocks are identified as the expected change in the fed funds rate orthogonal to expected u s business cycle conditions while unanticipated shocks are the one step ahead forecast error anticipated shocks explain around half of the narrative series of u s monetary policy shocks to identify the effects of both shocks i estimate a panel var using a sample of emerging economies an anticipated 25 basis points contractionary u s interest rate shock induces a fall of 0 5 in gdp from its trend two quarters before the shock materializes both anticipated and unanticipated changes in the u s interest rate cause significant and quantitatively similar effects the increase of the u s baa corporate spread in response to both shocks significantly exacerbates the response of emerging economies after accounting for anticipation u s interest rate shocks explain 14 of business cycle fluctuations in emerging economies

macro determinants of volatility and volatility spillover in energy markets abstract we analyze the time varying volatility and spillover effects in crude oil heating oil and natural gas futures markets by incorporating changes in important macroeconomic variables and major political and weather related events into the conditional variance equations we allow asymmetric responses to random disturbances in each market as well as to good and bad economic news related to the overall economy results show the presence of asymmetric effects in both random disturbances and macroeconomic variables a bidirectional volatility spillover effect is found between natural gas and crude oil and between the natural gas and heating oil markets crude oil volatility is found to increase following major political financial and natural events seasonality and day of the week effects are found in the crude oil and heating oil markets

the spillover effects of good governance in a tax competition framework with a negative environmental externality we investigate the impact of a political regime shift affecting consumers business interests and lobby contributions when countries engage in tax competition in capital and a polluting resource when consumers have more influence than resource owners the resource tax rate and public spending rise while environmental damages lobbying contribution and the capital tax rate fall this response can spillover to other countries leading to lower welfare capital tax harmonization improves welfare of consumers and resource owners resource tax harmonization and governance harmonization both reduce the influence of lobbying and improve consumer welfare but resource owners are worse off

poolability and the finance growth nexus a cautionary note abstract the present contribution tests whether countries can be pooled when studying the finance growth nexus overall our results point toward a pragmatic positive answer though considerable heterogeneity is present among developing countries

international capital flows to emerging markets national and global determinants using a novel dataset for emerging markets we empirically investigate the nature and determinants of aggregate and disaggregate capital inflows we present formal statistical evidence of commonalities in capital inflows with the strongest evidence for the level of equity and bank flows advanced economy long run bond yields and commodity prices are identified as determinants of global capital flows we also consider the national determinants of capital flows finding that financial openness and institutions matter for country flows finally we identify important commonalities in the volatility of bank inflows

taxes and subsidies for pollution intensive industries as trade policy abstract this paper constructs a model of international oligopoly with negative externalities in production in which optimal environmental policy responses to foreign emission tax and subsidy programs can be calculated it is shown that by granting subsidies for abatement efforts or for a heavily taxed polluting input domestic net welfare is improved by capturing a greater share of the world market since the subsidy programs are supposed to improve the quality of the global environment they can be justified on environmental grounds in addition we show that a pigouvion emission tax restores efficiency in natural resource allocation whereas subsidy programs are in principle used as instruments in imperfectly competitive international markets

monetary policy news in the us effects on emerging market capital flows abstract we examine the impact of us monetary policy news on portfolio flows to emerging markets using a bayesian vectorautoregression that accounts for expectations of future monetary policy we define the us monetary policy news shock as one that increases monetary policy expectations while leaving the policy rate unchanged results suggest that the impact of this shock on portfolio flows as a share of gdp is economically small on aggregate but varies considerably across countries the countries we identify as being the most affected also experienced larger volumes of capital in and outflows before and after the 2013 taper tantrum episode respectively also macroeconomic performance and external vulnerabilities may matter however financial openness does not seem to be associated with differences in effects on capital flows over our sample period

endogenous lobby formation and endogenous environmental protection with unilateral tariff reduction this paper studies how one country s decision to liberalize trade affects the political economic structure that determines environmental policy in another country by constructing a political economy model in which the formation of lobby groups and environmental policy are endogenously determined we show that unilateral tariff reductions by a large country importing a polluting good will generate a lobby group with a relatively lower cost of organization in a small country exporting that good a formulated lobby demands an inefficient environmental policy and hence the small country s environmental regulations become less efficient then we show that when a lobby already exists unilateral tariff reductions result in the formation of a rival lobby and consequently make the small country s environmental policy more efficient

on the formation of industry lobby groups abstract this paper provides a step towards a more complete theory of lobbying extending the menu auction model of grossman and helpman grossman g m helpman e 1994 american economic review 84 833 850 a new explanation is proposed for why more concentrated industries more easily overcome the free rider problem inherent in political collective action instead of focusing on transactions costs as olson olson m 1965 the logic of collective action harvard university press cambridge ma we show that more collusive industries with higher collusive profits have a greater incentive to form lobby groups and to contribute to industry lobbying moreover more polluting industries also have a greater incentive to form and contribute to a lobby group

the erosion of colonial trade linkages after independence high trade between countries with colonial ties may be explained by government policies that establish preferential access or as a consequence of networks formed through social interactions using bilateral trade data from 1948 to 2003 we examine the eect of independence on post colonial trade the severing of formal colonial relations can lead to an immediate reduction in trade as preferential access is eliminated as well as a gradual reduction corresponding to the deterioration of trading networks our results reveal that independence reduces colonial trade with its colonizer metropole the reduction cumulates over a 30 year period and the disruption is particularly severe for hostile separations we also find that overall colonial trade falls subsequent to independence but to a lesser extent than trade with the metropole

unconventional monetary policy and the spillovers to emerging markets abstract unconventional monetary policy such as quantitative easing qe is often considered to have considerable spillover effects on emerging market economies eme aims at quantifying these effects so far mostly use high frequency data around announcement dates panels or var models this paper proposes an alternative way to estimate the effects of qe on emerging markets that allows us to include macroeconomic i e low frequency data together with announcement dates a qual var is estimated that integrates binary information of qe announcements with an otherwise standard var including us and emerging market variables a key advantage is that the model accounts for the endogeneity and forecastability of qe announcements the model uncovers the fed s latent unobservable propensity for qe and generates impulse responses for eme variables to qe shocks the results suggest that qe has significant effects on eme s financial conditions and plays a sizable role in explaining capital inflows equity prices and exchange rates

how do the renminbi and other east asian currencies co move abstract this paper investigates the degree and the nature of exchange rate co movements between the renminbi and a set of seven east asian currencies by estimating markov switching models with regime dependent correlations and time varying transition probabilities these models have several advantages first exchange rate co movements can vary across different depreciation and appreciation regimes second the renminbi can act as a transition variable that provides information regarding how the exchange rates evolve over time after controlling for global effects and exchange market pressures the results yield robust evidence of the renminbi s rising role in east asia as a significant factor in currency fluctuations a key result is that regional currencies tend to overreact when the renminbi depreciates and underreact when it appreciates suggesting that east asian economies are not willing to allow their currency to substantially appreciate against the chinese currency

the globalization of virtual water flows explaining trade patterns of a scarce resource abstract water availability is paramount for security and development yet many countries suffer from water scarcity virtual water trade or trade in water embedded agricultural commodities has been considered a means for countries to overcome water deficits provided they can import food rather than produce locally despite a rich literature research on the subject has not reached a consensus on whether virtual water trade is actually driven by relative water endowment differentials e g countries seeking to alleviate pressure on their own resources or by comparative advantage in water utilization e g countries using their most abundant and cheap factors of production understanding what drives virtual water trade would support water management policies in targeting the roots of water depletion excessive use due to lack of other available inputs and bad water management due to absence of water use regulation using panel data of bilateral virtual water trade flows from 1994 to 2007 applied to a gravity model we first demonstrate that arid countries do resort to trade as a means to alleviate water scarcity second we demonstrate that there is much inefficiency in water use in some countries where other agricultural inputs land labor are available and cheap given the increased urgency related to global water scarcity our results suggest how agricultural production and trade could help countries preserve and better use precious water resources

macroprudential policy in the presence of external risks abstract we document the relevance of external risks shocks to the level and volatility of world interest rates in shaping economic activity in emerging market economies emes and characterize optimal macroprudential policy in response to these risks in a small open economy subject to financial crises low and stable interest rates reinforce overborrowing arising from a pecuniary externality generated by collateral constraints that depend on asset prices we show that this mechanism leads to greater exposure to crises typically accompanied by abrupt increases in interest rates and a persistent rise in their volatility as observed during sudden stops in emes a tax on international borrowing that implements a social planner s optimal policy can be decomposed into three factors the severity of future crises the ability of the planner to dampen future crises and the incidence of future crises we show that the effects of interest rate volatility on these factors implies that qualitatively the tax responds non monotonically with respect to the direction of volatility shocks and that quantitatively increasing macroprudential taxes is seldom the optimal response to an increase in interest rate volatility

what drives oil prices emerging versus developed economies this paper explores the role of demand from emerging and developed economies as drivers of the real price of oil using a favar model that allows us to identify and compare demand from dierent groups of countries across the world we nd that demand from emerging economies most notably from asian countries is more than twice as important as demand from developed countries in accounting for the uctuations in the real price of oil and in oil production furthermore we

international spillovers of quantitative easing abstract this paper develops a two country model with asset market segmentation to investigate the effects of quantitative easing implemented by the major central banks on a typical small open economy that follows independent monetary policy the model is able to replicate the key empirical facts on emerging countries response to large scale asset purchases conducted abroad including inflow of capital to local sovereign bond markets an increase in international comovement of term premia and change in the responsiveness of the exchange rate to interest rate differentials according to our simulations quantitative easing abroad boosts domestic demand in the small economy but undermines its international competitiveness and depresses aggregate output at least in the short run this is in contrast to conventional monetary easing in the large economy which has positive spillovers to output in other countries we also find that limiting quantitative easing spillovers might require policies that affect directly international capital flows like purchasing assets by the small economy s central bank

identifying monetary policy in a small open economy under flexible exchange rates abstract previous empirical study on the effects of monetary policy shocks in small open economies has generated puzzling dynamic responses in various macroeconomic variables this paper argues that these puzzles derive from an identification of monetary policy that is inappropriate for such economies to remedy this it is proposed that a structural model be estimated to explicitly account for the features of the small open economy such a model is applied to canada with tightly estimated results overall the dynamic responses to the identified monetary policy shock are consistent with standard theory and highlight the exchange rate as a transmission mechanism

economic integration among developed developing and centrally planned economies a comparative analysis we examine six integration schemes and decompose their ability to increase inter member trade into environmental policy and system effects environmental factors caused the greatest variation in trade creation with inter member distance the most important environmental variable the cacm and efta have followed more effective integration policies than the eec lafta and the andean pact although integration can thus benefit developed and developing countries alike for some such as those in latin america inter member distances severely limit its effectiveness while the combination of policy and system has kept the cmea fromrr achieving its full potential for increasing inter member trade its effectiveness does not differ from that of unions among market economies

trade benefits under the eec generalized system of preferences the purpose of the paper is to test for the existence of a statistically significant effect of the eec generalized system of preferences on actual trade flows between developing countries and the eec using a gravity type model we estimate the gross trade creation effect of the eec generalized system of preferences on the eec imports from 10 major developing countries estimation on a yearly basis for the period 1967 1978 indicates the presence of a statistically significant effect it would appear that gross trade creation amounted to about s2 billion for these 10 countries in 1978 in addition to these calculations the paper reviews the eec generalized system of preferences in detail and offers comments on its future impact on exports from developing countries

explaining armington what determines substitutability between home and foreign goods for decades trade economists have modeled imperfect substitution between home and foreign goods in consumption often called the armington assumption with little analysis of what explains the wide variation in these substitution elasticities across sectors using a varying coefficients model the authors estimate armington elasticities between u s domestic and foreign goods across over one hundred industrial sectors from 1980 to 1988 and examine the role of product industry political and home bias factors as determinants they find strong support that the presence of foreign owned affiliates affects armington elasticities in important ways and some support that entry barriers and union presence have an effect

polluters and collective action theory and evidence 1 introductionthe seminal theory by olson 1965 predicts that industries with fewer firms have a greater ability to undertake collective action they organize cooperative political action more easily because greater concentration lowers the cost of political action 1 the empirical evidence is inconclusive however andres 1985 masters and keim 1985 heywood 1988 and humphries 1991 find positive effects of industry concentration on the probability of making political action committee pac contributions see also mckeown 1994 pittman 1976 finds that concentrated industries generate greater contribution levels grier munger and roberts 1991 find an inverted u shaped relationship between the level of pac formation and industry concentration with a maximum political participation rate occurring at a four firm concentration ratio around 0 45 esty and caves 1983 and zardkoohi 1985 report ambiguous effects of concentration on pac contributions 2in this paper we suggest an alternative perspective on firms ability to organize collective action which to our knowledge has been ignored so far the novel argument is that industries that face multiple regulations a greater number of policy issues find it easier to overcome collective action problems and sustain lobbying in particular we focus on the difference between firms in polluting and clean industry sectors using a simple repeated game framework similar to spagnolo 2000 we argue that firms in industries that are naturally polluting because of their input requirements and therefore incur pollution abatement costs will face an additional policy battle compared with other industries everything else equal 3 this enables such industries to sustain greater cooperation and lobbying this is because firms seeking to form a lobby group face a free riding problem due to a limited amount of enforcement power available to punish deviation and ensure cooperation firms that face multiple areas of regulation have an advantage in the formation of lobby groups because they have a greater amount of enforcement power available to reallocate between policy issues when joint lobbying gives large gains in environmental policy this surplus can be reallocated to trade policy for example free riding behavior on trade policy lobbying may more easily be disciplined the prediction that emerges from our theoretical model is that polluting industries are relatively less affected by the free riding problems involved in organizing political action and we thus expect the level of political contributions to be higher in these sectors 4we evaluate this prediction using a cross section data set of u s manufacturing industries our empirical model builds on a multiple equation model by gawande and bandyopadhyay 2000 who test the well established theory of grossman and helpman 1994 on the pattern of protection their theory takes lobby group formation as given we augment gawande and bandyopadhyay s model with an additional equation for environmental policy stringency 5 the empirical results lend support to our theory industry pac contributions and thus the level of lobby group cooperation are greater in industries with larger pollution abatement costs this result is robust to several measures of lobby group formation and environmental policy the present paper contributes to the recent literature on the formation of lobby groups in the area of pollution taxation damania and fredriksson 2000 argue that collusive industries may more easily form lobby groups that oppose such taxes using a related setup damania and fredriksson 2003 discuss the effect of exogenous trade liberalization on environmental policy formation when lobby group formation is endogenous pecorino 1998 and mitra 1999 discuss the formation of trade lobby groups 6 neither of these papers explore the relationship between collective action and the number of policy instruments however

us monetary policy and global banking flows abstract this note investigates the impact of us monetary policy on us global bank leverage and cross border us dollar denominated banking flows using us monetary policy shocks identified based on narrative sources and the federal reserve s greenbook forecasts romer and romer 2004 compared to bruno and shin 2015 who employ standard recursive monetary policy identification techniques we find that leverage declines more quickly and to a much larger extent after a monetary tightening suggesting that declines in the availability of debt finance play a significant role in the propagation of monetary policy via the banking system the decline in international flows of dollar denominated bank funding is also larger using the externally identified monetary policy measure as is the degree of us dollar appreciation by expanding the baseline model into bilateral vars for 36 countries we find that the retrenchment of cross border banking flows after us monetary contraction is much larger in response to the externally identified monetary policy shocks which is consistent with the results of the aggregate model by looking at country groups it is observed that banking outflows after us monetary contraction are more pronounced in the case of emerging market economies than in the case of advanced economies

business cycles and the exchange rate system some international evidence this paper investigates the differences in time series behavior of key economic aggregates under alternative exchange rate systems we use a postwar sample of 49 countries to compare the behavior of output consumption trade flows government consumption spending and real exchange rates under alternative exchange rate systems pegged floating and cooperative systems such as the ems we then examine evidence from two particular episodes involving canada and ireland of changes in the exchange rate system aside from greater variability of real exchange rates under flexible than under pegged nominal exchange rate systems we find little evidence of systematic differences in the behavior of macroeconomic aggregates or international trade flows under alternative exchange rate systems these results are of interest because a large class of theoretical models implies that the nominal exchange rate system has important effects on a number of macroeconomic quantities

economic effects of currency unions we develop a new instrumental variable iv approach to estimate the effects of different exchange rate regimes on bilateral outcomes the basic idea is that the characteristics of the exchange rate between two countries are partially related to the independent decisions of these countries to peg explicitly or de facto to a third currency notably that of a main anchor this component of the exchange rate regime can be used as an iv in regressions of bilateral outcomes we apply the methodology to study the economic effects of currency unions the likelihood that two countries independently adopt the currency of the same anchor country is used as an instrument for whether they share a common currency we find that sharing a common currency enhances trade increases price comovements and decreases the comovement of real gross domestic product shocks

the political economy of trade liberalization and environmental policy a pressure group model where environmental and industry lobby groups offer political support in return for favorable pollution tax policies is used to explain and predict the equilibrium pollution tax in sectors protected by tariffs the political economy effects of trade liberalization are investigated the pollution tax is shown to decrease if the lobbying effort by the environmental lobby decreases more rapidly than by the industry lobby ceteris paribus the level of political conflict falls with trade liberalization pollution may increase because of a reduction of the pollution tax and tax revenues may fall simultaneously as pollution increases the global trading system is currently undergoing another round of multilateral trade liberalization and regional economic integration is occurring in several parts of the world the trade environment link has become an important part of trade liberalization talks it is commonplace for industry representatives to argue that less stringent environmental regulations give less developed countries ldcs a comparative advantage in pollution intensive goods and that industries with high abatement costs will migrate to ldcs environmentalists argue that international differences in environmental laws and regulations may be reduced to their lowest common denominator through political pressure this is not a fear of trade liberalization itself but of the effects of lower trade barriers on the political determination of environmental regulation

currency unions and trade how large is the treatment effect currency unions and trade what can the data say the impact of a common currency on trade can be grossly mismeasured if countries that belong to currency unions are systematically different from those that do not and if the relationship between trade and its observable determinants is complex i argue that such complications are plausible and likely to distort the empirical results of a recent economic policy paper by andrew rose issue 30 2000 pp 7 45 using techniques designed to be robust in this situation i find that the effects of common currency on international trade are considerably less dramatic and much less precisely estimated torsten persson i have always maintained that the measured effect of a single currency on trade appears implausibly large but i am not convinced by torsten persson s diagnosis and proposed solution i apply a variety of estimation techniques to a new larger data set where many more instances of currency union creation and abandonment make it possible to rely on time series as well as cross sectional evidence the results are similar to my earlier ones the effect of a single currency on trade is large andrew rose

regime switching in emerging market business cycles interest rate volatility and sudden stops abstract we document the presence of discrete regime switching in emerging market business cycles particularly in the volatility of interest rates at which countries borrow internationally using a multi country regime switching vector autoregressive model we study the statistical relationship of such business cycle regimes with episodes of sudden stops periods of high volatility tend to be persistent and are associated with high interest rates the occurrence of sudden stops in external financing and large declines in economic activity most strikingly we show that regime switches drive the countercyclicality of interest rates in emerging markets documented in previous literature neumeyer and perri 2005 and that high volatility regimes forecast sudden stops 6 and 12 months ahead

unconventional economic policies and sentiment an international assessment this paper estimates using bayesian and global vars the spillover effects of unconventional fiscal and monetary policies implemented in the united states and in the eurozone during the last decade consumer confidence and investor sentiment indicators are introduced in the models in order to highlight the signalling channel in the responses to economic policy innovations in times of crisis our results reveal that consumer and investor perceptions of innovative economic measures are relevant to study the pass through of economic policies to the real sector in times of crisis and zero lower bound interest rates in particular the signalling channel plays an important role in successful unconventional economic policies moreover if unconventional economic policies have an impact abroad the effects are similar to those measured in the domestic country region consequently coordination and transparency are a prerequisite for ensuring short term growth after a global financial crisis

on the economics of virtual water trade abstract virtual water trade is increasingly recognized as a useful metaphor for thinking about freshwater resources in an international context its legitimacy in terms of economic theory has been questioned by a number of authors however in this article i develop new theoretical results that place the virtual water concept on a firm economic foundation and which correct several misconceptions within the existing literature on virtual water economics

bayesian methods for dynamic multivariate models if dynamic multivariate models are to be used to guide decisionmaking it is important that probability assessments of forecasts or policy projections be provided when identified bayesian vector autoregression var models are presented with error bands in the existing literature both conceptual and numerical problems have not been dealt with in an internally consistent way in this paper the authors develop methods to introduce prior information in both reduced form and structural var models without introducing substantial new computational burdens their approach makes it feasible to use a single large dynamic framework for example twenty variable models for tasks of policy projections copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

are virtual water flows in spanish grain trade consistent with relative water scarcity abstract virtual water adds a new dimension to international trade and brings along a new perspective about water scarcity and water resource management most virtual water literature has focused on quantifying virtual water flows and on its application to ensure water and food security nevertheless the analysis of the potential gains from international trade at least from a water resources perspective needs to take into account both spatial and temporal variations of blue groundwater and stream flow and green soil moisture water as well as the socioeconomic and policy conditions this paper evaluates whether spanish international trade with grains is consistent with relative water scarcity for this purpose the study estimates the volume and economic value of virtual water flow through international grain trade for the period 1997 2005 which includes 3 years with different rainfall levels the calculations show that spain is a net virtual water importer through international grain trade the volume of net virtual water imports amounts to 3420 4383 and 8415 million m 3 in wet 1997 medium 1999 and dry 2005 years respectively valuing blue water at its shadow price or scarcity value blue water exports oscillate between 0 7 and 34 2 million euros for a wet and dry year respectively overall grain trade is apparently consistent with relative water scarcity as net imports increase in dry years however the evolution of grain exports expressed as a variation in quantity and volume does not match the variations in resource scarcity a disaggregated crop analysis reveals that there are other factors such as quality product specialization or the demand for a standardized product which also influence trade decisions and are not included in the notion of virtual water these facts among others can therefore create potential distortions in the application of virtual water to the analysis of specific trade patterns nevertheless from a water resources perspective virtual water can bring important insights across countries for improving water and land management globally fostering adaptation strategies to climate change and to transboundary resource management

trade policy reform endogenous lobby group formation and environmental policy abstract this paper explores the effects of trade liberalization on environmental policy outcomes when collective action is endogenous the polluting industry s ability to undertake lobbying is shown to depend on the degree of competition in the product market establishing a new link between trade and environmental policies if trade liberalization causes industry collective action to become harder to sustain the stringency of the environmental policy is likely to rise these results highlight the role of trade liberalization on product market competition and its consequent impact on the incentive to lobby for less stringent environmental policies

us monetary policy and the euro area abstract this study documents empirically that contractionary us monetary policy may generate short term expansionary spillover effects in individual euro area ea member countries economic activity increases mainly via the trade channel also domestic credit and stock markets expand highlighting the importance of the financial channel however the international repercussions are transitory and distributed unevenly within the ea the effect diminishes as ea interest rates increase with a few quarters delay while the effects are heterogenous and rather large before 1999 responses become more homogeneous and smaller in size after the implementation of the euro still country specific asymmetries remain

fiscal imbalances and the dynamics of currency crises abstract this paper analyzes links between the fiscal theory of the price level ftpl and the first generation models after krugman journal of money credit and banking 11 1979 311 325 exploring the idea that a synthesis between the two can become a new framework to analyze the fiscal dimension of currency crises working in a simple synthetic framework we show how external nominal shocks can cause a fiscal imbalance and undermine currency stability resolve two well known paradoxes of the first generation model discuss the role of seigniorage revenues and illustrate how fiscal and interest rate policies interact to determine the magnitude and the timing of speculative attacks and devaluations

spread the word international spillovers from central bank communication abstract we construct a novel text dataset to measure the sentiment component of communications for 23 central banks over the 2002 2017 period our analysis yields three results first comovement in sentiment across central banks is not reducible to trade or financial flow exposures second sentiment shocks generate cross country spillovers in sentiment policy rates and macroeconomic variables and the fed appears to be a uniquely influential generator of such spillovers even among prominent central banks and third geographic distance is a robust and economically significant determinant of comovement in central bank sentiment while shared language and colonial ties have weaker predictive power

foreign effects of higher u s interest rates abstract this paper analyzes the spillovers of higher u s interest rates on economic activity in a large panel of 50 advanced and emerging economies we allow the response of gdp in each country to vary according to its exchange rate regime trade openness and a vulnerability index that includes current account foreign reserves inflation and external debt we document large heterogeneity in the response of advanced and emerging economies to u s interest rate surprises in response to a u s monetary tightening gdp in foreign economies drops about as much as it does in the united states with a larger decline in emerging economies than in advanced economies in advanced economies trade openness with the united states and the exchange rate regime account for a large portion of the contraction in activity in emerging economies the responses do not depend on the exchange rate regime or trade openness but are larger when vulnerability is high

cleaning up while cleaning up pollution abatement interest groups and contingent trade policies this paper analyzes the political economy of environmental policy formation in a trading economy with established rules for administered protection we argue that the social costs associated with the adoption of an inefficient environmental regime are likely to be compounded by induced restrictions on trade when the effected industries are import competing the preferences of interest groups for alternative environmental regimes tend to be linked to the legal institutional setting in which trade policy is conducted under existing rules and practices in the area of administered protection there is reason to believe that interest group preferences for an inefficient approach to pollution control will be strengthened because the adoption of such a regime is more likely to lead to a concomitant increase in trade barriers

a gravity model of virtual water trade this work investigates the determinants of virtual water trade vwt ows by means of an estimated gravity model of trade applied to the virtual water embodied in the agricultural goods exchanged across countries in line with the recent literature on the gravity model the paper presents a battery of estimation methods cross section and panel ols and pseudo maximum likelihood with and without two way xed eects the analysis shows that bilateral vwt ows are aected by the classical determinants of trade but also by national water endowments as well as by the level of pressure on water resources these general ndings are robust even though some variation can be observed across the estimation methods and in particular when smaller sub samples of countries such as continents and regional groups are considered this contributes to account for the mixed evidence in the literature on the importance of water endowments for the vwt ows

understanding the cross country effects of u s technology shocks abstract business cycles are substantially correlated across countries yet most existing models are not able to generate substantial transmission through international trade we show that the nature of such transmission depends fundamentally on the features determining the responsiveness of labor supply and labor demand to international relative prices we augment a standard international macroeconomic model to incorporate three key features a weak short run wealth effect on labor supply variable capital utilization and imported intermediate inputs for production this model can generate large and significant endogenous transmission of technology shocks through international trade we demonstrate this by estimating the model using data for canada and the united states with limited information bayesian methods we find that this model can account for the substantial transmission of permanent u s technology shocks to canadian aggregate variables such as output and hours documented in a structural vector autoregression transmission through international trade is found to explain the majority of the business cycle comovement between the united states and canada