Download or read book Trade Liberalization Firm Performance and Labor Market Outcomes in the Developing World written by Paolo Epifani and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2003 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reviews the micro-level evidence on the effects of trade and investment liberalization in the developing world. He focuses, in particular, on the effects of the 1991 trade reform in India since it provides an excellent controlled experiment in which the effects of a drastic trade regime change can be measured. His main findings are: 1) There is evidence of trade-induced productivity gains (in this respect, however, India is an exception. 2) These gains mainly stem from intra-industry reallocation of resources among firms with different productivity levels. 3) The gains are larger in import-competing sectors. 4) There is no evidence of significant scale efficiency gains. Unilateral trade liberalization is often associated with a reduced scale efficiency. 5) There is evidence of a pro-competitive effect of trade liberalization. 6) There is no evidence either of learning-by-exporting effects or of beneficial spillover effects from foreign-owned to local firms active in the same sectors. 7) There is evidence, however, of positive vertical spillovers from foreign direct investment. 8) There is evidence of skill upgrading induced either by technology imports or by trade-induced reallocations of market shares in favor of plants with higher skill-intensity. 9) There is no evidence of trade-induced increases in labor demand elasticities. But direct evidence suggests that trade exposure raises wage volatility. 10) There is no evidence of substantial employment contraction in import-competing sectors.

Download or read book Trade Liberalization Firm Performance and Labour Market Outcomes in the Developing World What Can We Learn from Micro Level Data written by Paolo Epifani and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We review the micro-level evidence on the effects of trade and investment liberalization in the developing world. We focus, in particular, on the effects of the 1991 trade reform in India, since it provides an excellent controlled experiment in which the effects of a drastic trade regime change can be measured. The main findings can be summarized as follows. 1) There is evidence of trade-induced productivity gains (in this respect, however, India is something of an exception); 2) These gains mainly stem from the intra-industry reallocation of resources among firms with different productivity levels and: 3) they are larger in import competing sectors; 4) There is no evidence of significant scale efficiency gains. Indeed, unilateral trade liberalization is often associated with a reduced scale efficiency; 5) There is evidence of a pro-competitive effect of trade liberalization; 6) There is no evidence either of learning-by-exporting effects or of beneficial spillover effects from foreign owned to local firms; 7) There is evidence of skill upgrading induced either by technology imports, or by trade-induced reallocations of market shares in favor of plants with higher skill-intensity; 8) There is no evidence of trade-induced increases in labor demand elasticities. Direct evidence suggests, however, that trade exposure raises wage volatility; 9) There is no evidence of substantial employment contraction in import competing sectors.

Download or read book Trade Liberalization Firm Performance and Labor Market Outcomes in the Developing World written by Paolo Epifani and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Epifani reviews the micro-level evidence on the effects of trade and investment liberalization in the developing world. He focuses, in particular, on the effects of the 1991 trade reform in India since it provides an excellent controlled experiment in which the effects of a drastic trade regime change can be measured. His main findings are:ʼn There is evidence of trade-induced productivity gains (in this respect, however, India is an exception).ʼn These gains mainly stem from intra-industry reallocation of resources among firms with different productivity levels.ʼn The gains are larger in import-competing sectors.ʼn There is no evidence of significant scale efficiency gains. Unilateral trade liberalization is often associated with a reduced scale efficiency.ʼn There is evidence of a pro-competitive effect of trade liberalization.ʼn There is no evidence either of learning-by-exporting effects or of beneficial spillover effects from foreign-owned to local firms active in the same sectors.ʼn There is evidence, however, of positive vertical spillovers from foreign direct investment.ʼn There is evidence of skill upgrading induced either by technology imports or by trade-induced reallocations of market shares in favor of plants with higher skill-intensity.ʼn There is no evidence of trade-induced increases in labor demand elasticities. But direct evidence suggests that trade exposure raises wage volatility.ʼn There is no evidence of substantial employment contraction in import-competing sectors.This paper - a product of Trade, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to assess the impact of trade and investment liberalization in developing countries.

Download or read book Openness Outward Orientation Trade Liberalization and Economic Performance in Developing Countries written by Sebastian Edwards and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The paper provides a critical review of the existing empirical literature that deals with the relationship between trade orientation and economic performance. Using a model that avoids the shortcomings of most current measures of trade orientation, the author finds strong support for the hypothesis that, other things being equal, countries with a less distorted external sector grow faster than countries with a more distorted external sector.

Download or read book Essays on Trade Liberalization and Labor Market Outcomes written by Zhe Jiang and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation studies trade liberalization and labor market outcomes. The first two chapters examine the impact of China's trade liberalization on the adjustment of U.S. labor market for skilled and unskilled workers in a dynamic general equilibrium framework with firm heterogeneity and factor proportions. In the first chapter, I most specifically look into the effect of trade cost reduction on U.S. skill premium in an environment which I abstract from labor market friction. Featuring labor market search and matching frictions, the second chapter is part of a broader agenda on the labor market effect of China's trade liberalization and U.S. firms' offshoring decisions, with a greater focus on the dynamics of unemployment of skilled and unskilled workers. The third chapter investigates the impact of the China's increased trade openness on its local labor market. It examines the effects of China's domestic migration policy change and trade liberalization on wage inequality in China using a dynamic general equilibrium model of international trade and internal migration across regions. This dissertation showcases some of the ways trade policy can interact with firms' endogenous offshoring and entry decisions, workers' mobility choices, and labor markets frictions in a dynamic fashion. More specifically, the first chapter studies how wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers interact with multinational firms' decisions and countries' different factor endowments using a two-country dynamic stochastic model featuring task-offshoring, heterogeneous firms and factor proportions. It shows that besides the traditional Stolper-Samuelson mechanism that shifts factors of production towards a country's comparative advantage sectors, there also exist other firm-level adjustment mechanisms that widen the wage gap after trade liberalization. It finds that in the short run, offshoring widens wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers through increasing high-skilled wage and lowering low-skilled wage. Such effect is more announced in the beginning phase of the adjustment, and slows down over time as low-skilled wage rises faster than the cool-down of high-skilled wage increase. The intensive margin and the extensive margin are both active in shaping rising wage gap in the home country, with the latter playing a more important role in the short to medium run compared to the beginning stage following the shock. The second chapter studies the dynamic effects of offshoring on the unemployment rates and wage inequality across the high-skilled and low-skilled workers through the dynamics of firms' production location and entry decisions in general equilibrium. First, I examine the dynamic effects of offshoring cost reduction due to China's trade liberalization. Estimates from vector autoregressions (VARs) show that a decrease in offshoring costs is associated with a short-lived increase in low-skilled unemployment, but a persistent decline in high-skilled unemployment and a less persistent expansion of wage gap in the source country. Second, I build a two-country trade-in-task model with firm heterogeneity, endogenous selection into entry and offshoring as well as search and matching frictions to study the channels through which offshoring cost reductions affect the labor market outcomes for different skill groups over time. The model successfully reproduces the VAR evidence and highlights the importance of endogenous firm entry and labor market frictions in generating the empirical dynamic responses of wage and unemployment across different skill groups. The third chapter investigates China's labor market's responses to its own trade liberalization, which is a relatively less explored topic compared to the relationship between the China shock and labor market changes in other countries. Using data from CHIP (Chinese Household Income Project), this chapter aims to fill this gap by estimating the effects of trade liberalization on Chinese local labor markets. In addition, it investigates changes in urban to rural wage inequality and skill premium in urban and rural areas separately with the availability of surveys conducted in urban and rural households. In the model, a dynamic general equilibrium framework with heterogeneous firms, heterogeneous workers and internal migration is employed to study the impact of policy-generated trade cost reduction and easing of migration restrictions on Chinese wage inequality. I focus on the role of labor mobility that characterizes the large rural-to-urban migration in the midst of trade liberalization in shaping skill premium and urban to rural wage inequality. Calibrating the changes in policy-generated migration cost reduction and trade cost decline, as well as productivity increase in the tradable sector, this paper analyzes the responses of different measures of wage inequality and other macroeconomics variables following these shocks. This dissertation highlights the role of interaction of firm dynamics, factor endowments and labor market frictions in shaping the labor market adjustments. The positive effects of offshoring on the labor market for workers regardless of skill levels suggest that more trade frictions designed to restrict offshoring is likely to hinder firm entry, which is a key driver that contributes to higher wages and lower unemployment rates of both skilled and unskilled workers over time. It also points to the importance of labor market reforms by showing that easing of migration restriction and search and matching frictions are both beneficial to exports and wages of all workers, with consequences of rising wage inequality though.

Download or read book Trade Liberalization and Poverty written by Neil McCulloch and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Openness to trade is a key element of economic policy; continuing extreme poverty in developing countries is a disgrace. This Handbook examines how concerns about the world's poor should affect our attitude towards trade liberalization. Part I draws on economic analysis and practical experience to construct a framework to analyse the links between trade liberalization and poverty. It shows policy-makers how to identify the critical features in their economies so they can ensure that the poor benefit from liberalization. Part II explores the reform of particular sectors -- agriculture, services, etc., and particular instruments of trade policy -- export subsidies, anti-dumping measures, etc. It presents an economic analysis of each type of reform, shows the likely outcome for the poor, and discusses the issue's status on the World Trade Organization's agenda. Book jacket.

Download or read book Adjusting to Trade Policy Reform written by Steven J. Matusz and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A survey of more than 50 empirical papers shows that the adjustment costs of trade liberalization are small relative to the benefits. Moreover, manufacturing employment typically increases with trade liberalization. The limited data suggest that trade liberalization reduces poverty.Virtually all of the studies that quantify the adjustment costs of trade liberalization relative to the benefits point to the conclusion that adjustment costs are small in relation to the benefits of trade liberalization.The explanation for low adjustment costs is that: These costs are typically short term and end when workers find a job, but the benefits grow as the economy does. Unemployment doesn't last long, especially where workers' pay was not substantial in the original job. Normal labor turnover often exceeds job displacement from trade liberalization.Moreover, studies that examine the impact of trade liberalization on employment in developing countries find there is little decline - and usually an increase - in manufacturing employment in developing countries a year after trade liberalization, for three reasons: Developing countries tend to have comparative advantage in labor-intensive industries, and trade liberalization tends to favor labor. Interindustry shifts occur after trade liberalization, which minimizes the dislocation of factors of production. In many industries normal labor turnover exceeds dislocation from trade liberalization, so downsizing, when necessary, can be accomplished without much forced unemployment. Matusz and Tarr recommend a uniform tariff to minimize special-interest lobbying for protection since it diffuses the benefits of protection.This paper - a product of Trade, Development Research Group - is part of larger effort in the group to examine how trade liberalization affects growth and poverty reduction. David Tarr may be contacted at dtarr @worldbank.org.

Download or read book Liberalizing Foreign Trade in Developing Countries written by Demetris Papageorgiou and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Productivity in Indian Manufacturing written by Vinish Kathuria and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume comprehensively captures trends in productivity and its determinants in the post-reform period for Indian manufacturing. It provides an up-to-date survey of different methods employed in measuring productivity and their applications across organized and unorganized sectors, including food, beverages, furniture, gems, chemicals, petroleum and rubber, metals and minerals, paper products, publishing, textiles, etc. The essays examine the uneven impact of economic reforms and growth on the performance of the manufacturing sector. This will be especially useful to students and scholars of economics, business and management, policymakers and governmental agencies, particularly those interested in Indian economy and manufacturing.

Download or read book The Twin Effects of Globalization written by Francesco Daveri and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2003 with total page 33 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Employees of "globalized" firms face a riskier, but potentially more rewarding, menu of labor market outcomes. We document this neglected trade-off globalization for a sample of Indian manufacturing firms. On the one hand, the employees of firms subject to foreign competition face a more uncertain stream of earnings and riskier employment prospects. On the other, they enjoy a more rapid career and/or have more opportunities to train and upgrade their skills. The negative uncertainty costs and the positive incentive effects of globalization are thus twin to each other. Concentrating on just one side of the coin gives a misleading picture of globalization.

Download or read book Palgrave Dictionary of Emerging Markets and Transition Economics written by Jens Hölscher and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-10-21 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The period of transition from socialism to capitalism in parts of Europe and Asia over the past 25 years has attracted considerable interest in academia and beyond. From the Editors of Palgrave's iconic series 'Studies in Economic Transition' comes the Palgrave Dictionary of Emerging Markets and Transition Economics. This dictionary addresses the needs of students, lecturers and the interested general public to quickly find definitions and explanations of topics, institutions, personalities and processes in this historical phase of changing societies, which as such is not concluded. Today newly emerging market economies try to learn from the experiences of transition economies. Those who love The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics will enjoy the format of this Dictionary, which uses an encyclopaedia-based approach, where articles not only define the terms but provide an overview of the evolution of the term or theory and also touch on the current debates.

Download or read book Oecd Economic Surveys India written by Oecd and published by Academic Foundation. This book was released on 2007 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book OECD Economic Surveys India 2007 written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2007-10-09 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: OECD's first economic survey of the Indian economy. It opens with a broad overview of economic developments over the past twenty years, showing how India has grown to become the third largest economy in the world. It then examines a series of ...

Download or read book Green Growth in South Asia written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2023-10-03 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Notwithstanding global growth weakness and financial pressures, growth in South Asia is expected to remain robust, supported by slower fiscal consolidation than in other EMDEs, strong public investment, and a recovery as financial stress has subsided. Policy challenges include, in the short-term, preserving financial stability and restoring fiscal sustainability and, in the long-term, rekindling investment, and managing an energy transition. Currently, the energy intensity of South Asian economies is almost twice the global average—despite a decline over the past two decades that was almost entirely driven by firm-level, within-sector cuts in energy intensity. The potential benefit of regulatory policies, information interventions, and financial support to help accelerate the diffusion of these technologies, as well as the possibility that these could also lend broader support for countries' development objectives. The transition away from fossil fuels may have considerable labor market impacts. A wide range of policies, including better access to high-quality education, finance, and markets; improved labor mobility; and strengthened social safety nets, will be needed to facilitate the adjustment in labor markets while protecting vulnerable workers.

Download or read book Economic Consequences of Globalization written by Shujiro Urata and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-06-25 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economists have long recognized the gains from international trade. The question is, does international trade – or more broadly, globalization – increase growth? Notwithstanding the debates, there are still many questions, old and new, need to be explored in order to improve our understanding on various aspects of globalization, including its consequences. This book addresses some of these questions, utilizing micro datasets of some East Asian countries. The focus on East Asia is particularly interesting for the reason that most of these countries have relatively more opened economy and experienced a rapid de facto integration quite recently. The book puts forward questions which are related to the relationship between globalization on the one hand, and firm performance, activities, or characteristics, on the other. The chapters draw recent theoretical framework from the relevant literatures, and then empirically test – mostly by econometric analysis – the hypotheses on these relationships. The extent or magnitude of the globalization impact is also demonstrated by the means of descriptive analysis. Finally, there are useful insights for policy decision-makers to be drawn from the empirical results. The book presents rigorous empirical analysis based on recent theoretical framework in international economics, focusing on the highest growing region in the world. The use of micro-data analysis – a key feature of this book – gives us much richer information on various issues of globalization. This book, therefore, should be of the interest to scholars and postgraduate students of international economics, development economics, and East Asian economics.

Download or read book Economic Development written by Michael P. Todaro and published by Pearson UK. This book was released on 2020 with total page 1361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Economic Development, the leading textbook in this field, provides your students with a complete and balanced introduction to the requisite theory, driving policy issues, and latest research. Todaro and Smith take a policy-oriented approach, presenting economic theory in the context of critical policy debates and country-specific case studies, to show how theory relates to the problems and prospects of developing countries."--Publisher0́9s description

Download or read book Essays on the Economic Implications of Globalization written by Kensuke Suzuki and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The broad objective of this dissertation is to understand the economic implications of globalization, with a particular focus on two key aspects: international migration and trade liberalization. The dissertation is comprised of three chapters. In Chapter 1, my coauthor and I examine the impacts of Japan's immigration policy reforms on labor market outcomes and sectoral production across regions. In Chapters 2 and 3, I analyze the effects of China's trade liberalization, specifically its WTO accession in 2001, with a special emphasis on firms' input trade. Chapter 1 examines the impact of immigrant workers on the regional economies of the host country. We focus on Japan, which has expanded the foreign employment in the total workforce over the last three decades in response to the shrinking domestic workforce. We develop a quantitative spatial model to evaluate the gains of foreign employment, i.e., the consequences of an inflow of foreign workers on aggregate welfare, local wages, employment, and production. Our model features three crucial aspects--occupation, region, and sector--that interact with each other to shape the local labor market and production responses to immigration shocks. We quantify the model using the newly available micro-level data on foreign workers and conduct counterfactual exercises to evaluate the past and future immigration policy reforms. We find that in regions where foreign workers tend to gravitate, there was a substantial negative impact on the wages of low-education domestic workers. At a nationwide level, there is a minimal gain of social welfare. We argue that these results suggest that the Japanese labor market is segmented spatially, particularly for low-education workers. We also highlight the importance of the sectoral dimension in understanding the impact of foreign workers. Specifically, the skewed occupational distribution of foreign workers has pronounced implications on sectors that are intensive in occupations with a larger proportion of foreign workers and sectoral input-output linkage plays a key role in determining the regional impacts. Chapter 2 investigates the decision of firms to import intermediate inputs and their impact on firm performance. Previous research in development economics and international trade has highlighted the benefits of imported inputs for firms, including lower marginal cost of production and positive productivity implications from, e.g., interaction with foreign suppliers. Using Chinese firm-level data from the early 2000s, when trade liberalization occurred, I develop a dynamic structural model of a firm's importing decision that captures both static and dynamic benefits of using imported inputs. I estimate the firm's production function while controlling for unobserved productivity and confirms that the marginal cost of production decreases when using imported inputs (i.e., Ethier's love-of-variety effect), and their use has positive impacts on future productivity. By using the estimated model, I show that subsidizing the fixed cost of importing is more effective in increasing the overall import participation rate than subsidizing the startup sunk cost of importing. Chapter 3 examines the impact of trade liberalization on a firm's intermediate imports and aggregate outcomes, with a focus on heterogeneous impacts across locations within a country. I use Chinese firm-level data covering the period of China's trade reforms following its WTO accession in 2001 and finds that coastal firms, despite their geographic advantage in international trade, are less likely to import, use fewer imports, and spend less on imported inputs than inland firms on average. I also find evidence that coastal firms are less likely to import because domestic inputs are more available than in the inland region. To explain these findings, I develop a spatial general equilibrium model of a firm's input trade, which features multiple regions in a country, endogenous market size, and firm selection. I find that a reduction in international trade costs increases market size and the number of active firms in the coastal region, making the domestic input bundle relatively cheaper. As a result, the model replicates the empirical regularities that coastal firms are less likely to import and use fewer imports than inland firms.