Asier Minondo

The Emergence of New Industries at the Regional Level in Spain: A Proximity Approach Based on Product Relatedness.

abstract How do regions diversify over time? Inspired by recent studies, we argue that regions diversify into industries that make use of capabilities in which regions are specialized. Since the spread of capabilities occurs through mechanisms that have a strong regional bias, we expect that capabilities that are available at the regional level play a larger role than do capabilities that are available at the country level for the development of new industries. To test this hypothesis, we analyze the emergence of new industries in 50 S panish regions at the NUTS 3 level in the period 1988–2008. We calculate the capability-distance between new export products and existing export products in S panish regions and provide econometric evidence that regions tend to diversify into new industries that use similar capabilities as existing industries in these regions. We show that proximity to the regional industrial structure plays a much larger role in the emergence of new industries in regions than does proximity to the national industrial structure. This finding suggests that capabilities at the regional level enable the development of new industries.

Is the Border Effect an Artefact of Geographical Aggregation

The existence of a large border effect is considered as one of the main puzzles of international macroeconomics. We show that the border effect is, to a large extent, an artefact of geographic concentration. In order to do so we combine international flows with intranational flows data characterised by a high geographic grid. At this fine grid, intra-national flows are highly localised and dropping sharply with distance. The use of a small geographical unit of reference to measure intra-national bilateral trade flows allows to estimating correctly the negative impact of distance on shipments. When we use sector disaggregated export flows of 50 Spanish provinces in years 2000 and 2005 split into interprovincial and inter-national flows, we find that the border effect is reduced substantially and even becomes statistically not different from zero in some estimations.

The extensive and intensive margins of Spanish trade

ABSTRACT Recent empirical research highlights that differences in trade flows across countries, products and years are governed by two margins: the intensive margin and the extensive margin. The analysis of the relative contribution of each margin is very important to determine which policies can be more efficient to foster trade at the aggregate, geographic, product or firm level. We use the whole universe of firm level transaction data to analyse the relative contribution of these margins to changes in Spanish trade flows during the 1997–2007 period. We first apply the methodology proposed by Bernard et al. (2009) to decompose trade variation over time into three components: net entry of firms, product-country switching and value growth by regular trading firms. The first two components correspond to the extensive margin and the last one refers to the intensive margin. We find that short-run changes in exports and imports are governed by firms’ intensive margin; however, in the long-run, both the extensive and the intensive margins are equally important to foster trade. We also examine the importance of the trade margins at the cross-sectional level for the year 2007. We find that large differences in the Spanish trade flows across countries and products, especially in the case of exports, are explained by the number of firms that participate in trade, which is consistent with the fact that the number of trading partners decline significantly with distance.

The effect of outsourcing on the demand for skills in the Spanish manufacturing industry

This study analyses the effect of outsourcing on the demand for skills in the Spanish manufacturing industries. For the first time in the literature the origin of outsourcing is taken into account, distinguishing imports coming from developing countries and imports produced in developed countries. As theoretically expected, a positive link is found between outsourcing to developing countries and a higher demand for skills in the Spanish manufacturing sectors. However, it is found that outsourcing to developed countries also has a positive effect on the demand for skills. This later result may cast some doubts on previous studies’ conclusions.

Is the border effect an artefact of geographic aggregation

The existence of a large border effect is considered as one of the main puzzles of international macroeconomics. We show that the border effect is, to a large extent, an artefact of geographic concentration. In order to do so we combine international flows with intranational flows data characterised by a high geographic grid. At this fine grid, intra-national flows are highly localised and dropping sharply with distance. The use of a small geographical unit of reference to measure intra-national bilateral trade flows allows to estimating correctly the negative impact of distance on shipments. When we use sector disaggregated export flows of 50 Spanish provinces in years 2000 and 2005 split into interprovincial and inter-national flows, we find that the border effect is reduced substantially and even becomes statistically not different from zero in some estimations.

The disappearance of the border barrier in some European Union countries' bilateral trade

This paper estimates the tariff equivalent of the border barrier in each bilateral trade among European Union (EU) countries. The results show that there are large differences in the border barrier across EU countries’ bilateral trade. In some bilateral trade flows the border barrier has almost disappeared, whereas in other cases it is still equivalent to a 75% tariff. The results also show that some countries have low border barriers in most of their bilateral trade flows with other EU members, whereas other countries persistently present large border barriers.

Geography, Ties, and Knowledge Flows: Evidence from Citations in Mathematics

Using data on academic citations, career and educational histories of mathematicians, and disaggregated distance data for the worlds top 1000 math departments, we study how geography and ties affect knowledge flows among scholars. The ties we consider are coauthorship, past colocation, advisor-mediated relationships, and alma mater relationships (holding a Ph.D. from the institution where another scholar is affiliated). Logit regressions using fixed effects that control for subject similarity, article quality, and temporal lags, show linkages are strongly associated with citation. Controlling for ties generally halves the negative impact of geographic barriers on citations; the distance effect became insignificant after 2004.

THE CONVERGENCE IN PRODUCT-LEVEL RELATIVE PRODUCTIVITY ACROSS PROVINCES: The Convergence in Product-Level Relative Productivity Across Provinces

This paper uses highly disaggregated data to analyze the convergence process in product‐level relative productivity across Spanish provinces. Over the period 1988‐2013 there is a 53 per cent reduction in product‐level relative productivity differences across provinces. The speed of convergence in product‐level productivity is faster than in income per capita. Provinces that are geographically close, have strong ties and share similar factor endowments become more similar in product‐level relative productivities.

Cities export specialization

ABSTRACT We analyse whether more populated cities have an export specialization different from the one of less populated cities. Using very detailed product-level export data for Brazilian urban areas over the period 2000–2013, we show that more populated cities export proportionately more skill-intensive and complex goods than less populated cities. This result is consistent with the larger diversity of skills and the higher share of skilled workers in more populated cities.

The Variation of Export Prices Across and within Firms

This paper uses transaction-level trade data to analyze the differences in export prices across and within Spanish firms exporting manufactures in the 2010–2014 period. The transactional nature of the database uncovers sizable differences in the price that an exporter charges for the same product and destination. These differences are related with the number of goods covered within each product category, the exported quantity per transaction and the number of transactions carried out by firms.