This paper investigates the effects of trade openness on renewable energy consumption in 35 OECD countries for the period between 1999 and 2018. A panel smooth transition regression model is built. ...Imports, exports, and total trade are used as proxy variables of trade openness. To reduce the error of omitted variables, a control variable pool is constructed, consisting of foreign direct investment, access to electricity, international remittances, GDP per capita, domestic inflation rate, and carbon emissions. The empirical results demonstrate the existence of a strongly nonlinear relationship between trade openness and renewable energy consumption. In terms of imports, three structural breakpoints are identified: 33.732, 40.945, and 76.395. When the imports reach 40.945% of the GDP, their effect on renewable energy consumption will switch from promoting to inhibiting. Both exports and total trade have one structural breakpoint and can constantly promote renewable energy consumption. The analyses on the temporal and spatial variations of the effects show that imports, exports, and total trade all positively impacts renewable energy consumption between 1999 and 2018. Their effects first follow a downward trend, which later change to an upward trend. Imports, exports, and total trade exert the least impact on renewable energy consumption of OECD Asia Oceania. Regarding specific countries, exports and total trade most strongly impact the renewable energy consumption in Mexico and exert the least impact on the renewable energy consumption of the United States.
•Investigate the effect of trade openness on renewable energy consumption.•Use imports, exports, and total trade to represent trade openness between 1999 and 2018.•Apply the panel smooth transition regression model and a control variables pool.•Identify the nonlinear structural characteristics and the extent of these effects.•Show the spatial and temporal distribution of these effects in 35 OECD countries.
This paper exploits quasi-experimental variation in tariffs in southern Africa to estimate trade elasticities. Traded quantities respond only weakly to a 30 percent reduction in the average nominal ...tariff rate. Trade flow data combined with primary data on firm behavior and bribe payments suggest that corruption is a potential explanation for the observed low elasticities. In contexts of pervasive corruption, even small bribes can significantly reduce tariffs, making tariff liberalization schemes less likely to affect the extensive and the intensive margins of firms ' import behavior. The tariff liberalization scheme is, however, still associated with improved incentives to accurately report quantities of imported goods, and with a significant reduction in bribe transfers from importers to public officials.
This study offers novel evidence that reduced trade policy uncertainty (TPU) in the destination market promotes domestic entrepreneurial activities in a large developing economy. Exploiting China’s ...WTO accession as a quasi-natural experiment, we find that Chinese manufacturing industries with greater TPU reduction are associated with relative increases in the new firm entry rate. The TPU effect is more pronounced in industries with lower entry barriers or larger irreversible investments. In addition, TPU reduction fosters new entrants through both the exporting and non-exporting margins and contributes to strengthening regional agglomeration forces. Heterogeneity across regions with varying exporting costs and entry barriers is also identified, illustrating the important synchronization between external openness and internal reform for developing economies. Last, we show that reduction in TPU intensifies industry-level competition, induces better-quality entrants, and that new firm entry plays a non-negligible role in linking TPU reduction to improved economic performance.
•Reduced trade policy uncertainty (TPU) promotes domestic entrepreneurial activities.•Lower TPU fosters new firm entry through both exporting and non-exporting margins.•TPU reduction contributes to strengthening regional agglomeration forces.•TPU reduction intensifies industry-level competition and induces better-quality entrants.•Synchronization between external openness and internal reform is important.
Export promotion agencies: Do they work? Lederman, Daniel; Olarreaga, Marcelo; Payton, Lucy
Journal of development economics,
03/2010, Letnik:
91, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The number of national export promotion agencies (EPAs) has tripled over the last two decades. While more countries made them part of their export strategy, studies criticized their efficacy in ...developing countries. EPAs were retooled, partly in response to these critiques. This paper studies the impact of today's EPAs and their strategies, based on new survey data covering 103 developing and developed countries. Results suggest that on average they have a statistically significant effect on exports. Our identification strategies highlight the importance of EPA services for overcoming foreign trade barriers and solving asymmetric information problems associated with exports of heterogeneous goods. There are also strong diminishing returns, suggesting that as far as EPAs are concerned, small is beautiful.
This study investigates whether trade policy uncertainty impacts energy firms' financial investments. We find that trade policy uncertainty is negatively related to energy firm's financial ...investment, thus suggesting that energy firms prefer to reduce financial investment during periods of higher trade policy uncertainty. After adopting several robustness tests, our results remain robust. The negative correlation between trade policy uncertainty and financial investment is more significant in energy firms with less sales revenues, and lower sales growth rates. Meanwhile, energy firms with less serious competition and in areas with higher marketization are more likely to reduce financial investment when trade policy uncertainty increases. Further evidence shows that energy firms are more likely to hold more cash and increase research and development activities when trade policy uncertainty increases.
•We found that energy firms prefer to reduce financial investments during periods of higher trade policy uncertainty.•The negative correlation between trade policy uncertainty and financial investment is more significant in energy firms with less sales revenues, and lower sales growth rates.•Energy firms with less serious competition and in areas with higher marketization are more likely to decrease financial investments.•Energy firms are more likely to hold more cash and increase R&D activities when trade policy uncertainty increases.
This paper investigates the role of policy uncertainty on indices of economic globalization from 1996 to 2016 in the panel dataset of 142 countries. For this purpose, we use the nine measures of the ...Revisited KOF Economic Globalization Indices and two new measures of uncertainty: The World Uncertainty Index (WUI) and the Trade Policy Uncertainty Index (TPUI). The findings indicate that both the WUI and the TPUI are negatively associated with the overall index of economic globalization. The benchmark results remain consistent under various model specifications, econometric estimation techniques, and countries at different income levels.
Renewable energy technologies are promising, yet, very little is known about its role as a limiting factor in fossil fuel-attributable environmental degradation — especially in high-income countries. ...This study investigated the dynamic effect of renewable energy consumption, economic growth, biocapacity and trade policy on environmental degradation in the United States from 1985Q1 to 2014Q4. To achieve this objective, the study applied an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model to obtain the long-run and short-run dynamic coefficients. Toda-Yamamoto causality test was used to examine the direction of causality while Cholesky decomposition test was for innovative accounting to validate the estimated models. The empirical results divulged that a decline in environmental degradation can be attributed to an increase in renewable energy consumption through its negative effects on ecological footprint. Economic growth and biocapacity were found to exert upward pressure on ecological footprint; however, trade policy exerts downward pressure on ecological footprint. A two-sided causal relationship was established between economic growth and ecological footprint as well as economic growth and biocapacity. In contrast, a one-way causality was confirmed running from trade policy to renewable energy consumption and from renewable energy consumption to biocapacity. The innovative accounting revealed that 14.79% and 8.41% of renewable energy consumption and trade policy caused 0.60% and 9.88% deterioration in the environment. Hence, country-specific energy policies that increase the share of renewable energy in the energy portfolio are recommended.
•The dynamic role of renewable energy in environmental sustainability was examined.•Renewable energy plus sustained economic growth slow environmental degradation.•Renewable energy was the lowest contributor to shocks in ecological footprint.•Growth and biocapacity were found to exert upward pressure on ecological footprint.
This paper estimates the impact of macroeconomic fluctuations on import protection policies over 1988:Q1–2010:Q4 for five industrialized economies — the United States, European Union, Australia, ...Canada and South Korea. We find evidence of a strong countercyclical trade policy response in the pre-Great Recession period of 1988:Q1–2008:Q3 during which increases in domestic unemployment rates, real appreciations in bilateral exchange rates, and declines in the GDP growth rates of bilateral trading partners led to substantial increases in new temporary trade barriers. We then apply this pre-Great Recession empirical model to realized macroeconomic data from 2008:Q4 to 2010:Q4 and find that it predicts a surge of new import protection during the Great Recession — e.g., for the US and EU, the model predicts that new trade barriers would cover an additional 15 percentage points of nonoil imports, well above the baseline level of 2–3% of import coverage immediately preceding the crisis. Finally, we examine why the realized trade policy response differed from model predictions. While exchange rate movements played an important role in limiting new import protection during the Great Recession, we provide evidence of one particularly important change in trade policy responsiveness; i.e., in this period, governments refrained from imposing new temporary trade barriers against foreign trading partners experiencing their own weak or negative economic growth.
► The model estimates the impact of macroeconomic fluctuations on TTB import protection. ► The sample includes US, EU, Australia, Canada, and South Korea over 1988:Q1–2010:Q4. ► Increases in domestic unemployment and foreign GDP slowdowns lead to more import protection. ► Real bilateral exchange rate appreciations lead to more import protection. ► The model is used to estimate differences before and after the Great Recession.
This paper analyses the effects of the European Union's anti-dumping tariffs against Chinese imports on all affected firms: “the good” European import-competing firms, “the bad” Chinese exporters and ...“the ugly” European importers of dumped products. The results show that temporary import tariffs are beneficial to the least productive “good” EU producers, but harms the most productive “ugly” EU importers. Overall, the net effects of anti-dumping policy on European employment and exports are largely negative. Also tariffs enhance the productivity of surviving “bad” Chinese exporters and widens the productivity gap with European competitors.
This article undertakes an actor-centred case study of the European Parliament's (EP) reaction to the politicisation of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the most ...controversial EU trade negotiations in history, as structured by the behaviour of its political groups. Specifically, the article traces why and how the EP updated its position on TTIP at the height of politicisation through a new resolution adopted in the summer of 2015. We focus on the role played by the then swing group in the EP, the Socialist and Democrats (S&D), which was a key target of TTIP contestants. Building on the literature on EP politics, we explain how the S&D balanced responsiveness to outside contestants with the responsibility as a group that was required to maintain a stable majority within the EP. We demonstrate how the S&D position was steered by its largest delegations and MEPs with responsible roles. In addition, we show that S&D delegations which faced high levels of domestic politicisation and whose parties hold trade sceptic views defected from the compromise resolution. Our article contributes to the literatures on politicisation of trade, the role of the EP in trade policy, and politics in the European Parliament.
PDF
