1,721,021 research outputs found

    Patterns of international fragmentation of production and the relative demand for labor

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    Growing shares of international trade flows consist of intermediate and unfinished goods shipped from one country to another to combine manufacturing or services activities at home with those performed abroad. This configuration of the productive structure has been named “internationally fragmented.” The purpose of our work is to analyze the labor market effects of international fragmentation of production, looking at how it affects relative labor demand. Models of trade due to fragmentation of production suggest that when international fragmentation takes place we might observe changes in factor proportions in the affected industries. We use outward-processing-trade data – specifically related to international fragmentation of production – to test if the shift in the ratio of skilled and unskilled labor employed in Italy and Germany during the 1990s is related to fragmentation

    Openness, similarity in export composition and income dynamics

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    A relevant share of the theoretical and empirical analysis on economic growth has been devoted to finding a specific role for international trade in reinforcing countries’ growth rates. Not as much attention has been dedicated to the role of sectoral composition of export in influencing the effect of trade on income convergence. In this paper we look at this issue along the line of research on multiple regimes and convergence clubs, considering how openness and similarity in export composition among countries can induce convergence in income levels among the same countries. We apply our analysis to the catching-up of income levels of Central and Eastern Europe Countries to the EU benchmark. We explicitly consider the sectoral export patterns of the CEECs by comparing them to those of the 15 old members of the EU, focusing on countries’ specialization as suppliers for the EU market. Our main result is that similarity in export composition has a positive, significant and nonlinear impact on catching-up. Results are robust to controlling for openness and country-size and for investment, schooling, and the quality of institutions

    Reshaping the structure of the World Trade Network: a pivotal role for China?

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    In recent years, the global trade landscape has undergone significant changes, particularly in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and more recently as a consequence of Covid-19 pandemic. To understand the structure of international trade and the impact of these changes, this study applies a combination of network analysis and causal inference techniques to the most extensive coverage of available data in terms of time span and spatial extension. The study is conducted in two phases. The first one explores the structure of international trade by providing a comprehensive analysis of the World Trade Network (WTN) from various perspectives, including the identification of key players and clusters of strongly interacting countries. The second phase investigates the impact of the rising role of China on the global structure of the WTN. Overall, the results highlight a structural change in the WTN, evidenced by a variety of network metrics, around China's rapid growth years. Additionally, the reshaping of the WTN is not only accompanied by a significant increase in trade flows between China and its partners, but also by a corresponding decline in trade among non-China-partner countries. These results suggest that China played a pivotal role in the restructuring of the WTN in the first decades of this century. The findings of this study shed light on the interpretation of the rapidly changing landscape of global trade

    Similarity in trade structures, integration and catching-up

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    In this paper, we look at the role of export composition in the growth process, considering how increased similarity in trade structure among countries can induce catching-up in income levels in a group of countries in transition. We analyze the sectoral export patterns of the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) by comparing them to those of the current members of the European Union (EU), focusing on countries' specialization as suppliers for the EU market, and we assess whether similar export patterns foster the catching-up process of the CEECs. Our main result is that similarity in export composition has a positive, significant and non-linear impact on catching-up, and seems to be driven by the growth of the main export market and delocalization of production more than by other factors. Copyright (c) 2008 The Authors.
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