Talan B. İşcan

Trade Liberalization and Productivity-A Panel Study of the Mexican Manufacturing Industry

In recent years there has been a revival of interest in the trade-growth nexus. A number of authors have suggested that regional economic integration and liberalization of international trade are likely to have positive effects not only on productivity levels but also on long-term productivity growth rates in developing countries. Using a panel of Mexican manufacturing industries, this paper examines several alternative mechanisms through which trade contributes positively to productivity levels and growth rates. Special attention is paid to the comprehensive trade liberalization policies implemented in Mexico after 1986. The results indicate that productivity growth is significantly correlated with the share of imported intermediate inputs in sectoral output. Reductions in rates of protection are found to have significant positive effects on sectoral productivity levels. The estimates also suggest that after liberalization increasing share of exports in total output increased average productivity level by about 5 percent. However, the effects of trade liberalization on long-term productivity growth rates are found to be statistically insignificant.

The terms of trade, productivity growth and the current account

This paper extends the analytical framework provided by Glick and Rogoff (JME 1995) to an economy with traded and nontraded goods, and it analyzes the impact of country- specific and global productivity shocks on the current account and investment. Each of these disturbances have different implications for the current account and investment that are largely consistent with the empirical results. First, the current account responds by more than investment to country-specific traded productivity growth. Second, global traded productivity and country-specific nontraded productivity growth have no effect on the current account, but they have significant impact on investment. Third, global component of nontraded productivity is negligible and has no significant impact on either the current account or investment. In addition, the response of the current account and investment to relative prices (the terms of trade and exchange rate) are insignificant. This paper also discusses the potential reasons for it.

Present value tests of the current account with durables consumption

The present value tests of intertemporal model of the current account usually assume that all goods are traded and that aggregate consumption decisions can be closely approximated by a random walk process. This paper extends these models by explicitly introducing durables and nontraded goods into an intertemporal model of the current account, and tests the model using Canadian data. Since aggregate consumption expenditures on durables do not exhibit random walk behaviour even when the aggregate consumer has a quadratic utility function, the model that includes durables makes predictions that differ from those of the basic approach. When nontraded goods are also incorporated into the model, the most appropriate income variable becomes output net of nontraded production. These implications are examined using present value tests. The results suggest that introduction of both durables and nontraded goods improves upon the model with (traded) nondurables only. This seems to be due to the combination of durables and nontraded goods, as durables alone do not sufficiently refine the basic model.

How Much Can Engel's Law and Baumol's Disease Explain the Rise of Service Employment in the United States?

High income elasticity of demand for services and low income elasticity of demand for food (Engels law), and relatively slow productivity growth in the service sectors (Baumols disease) have been viewed as key drivers of rising share of services in employment in the United States during the 20th century. How much of the rising share of services can be explained by these two forces? A calibrated model of structural change shows that jointly Engels law and Baumols disease could explain about two-thirds of the reallocation of labor into services.

New Borders and Trade Flows: A Gravity Model Analysis of the Baltic States

The objective of this paper is to provide evidence on the effects of an economic and political union by studying the trade flows of the three Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania after the breakup of the Soviet Union. We specify and estimate a gravity model of exports for the Nordic countries which enables us to determine the size and direction of trade flows in the Baltic states had they not been affected by the political institutions of the Soviet Union. Our results suggest that Baltic foreign trade was not only reduced significantly but also diverted to the members of the former Soviet Union. Consistent with our estimates, we also find that these consequences of the former political union are quickly dissipating, and the Baltic countries are increasing their share of exports to the European Union and the U.S.

Agricultural Distortions, Structural Change, and Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Analysis

Taxing agriculture to mobilize resources for industrialization has been a widely used development strategy. Using novel cross-country time-series data sets with direct measures of agricultural taxation, we examine how a policy bias against agriculture affects the speed of convergence in income per capita, structural change, and economic growth. We find that distortionary agricultural policies in poor economies can account for the emergence of convergence clubs in our sample by significantly retarding their structural transformation and economic growth. Overall, we find no evidence suggesting that policies that discriminate against agriculture have been beneficial for long-term economic growth. Copyright 2011, Oxford University Press.

Devaluations and aggregate output fluctuations: a random coefficient regression model for Mexico

The goal of this paper is to investigate whether nominal devaluations had real output growth effects in Mexico and, if so, to assess the significance and duration of such effects. A random coefficient regression model to evaluate the output growth effects of 1976, 1982 and 1986 devaluations using sectoral data from 1970 to 1991 is specified and estimated. The results indicate unambiguous short-term contractionary effects of devaluations on non-agricultural output in Mexico. In addition, it is found that adjustments to imbalances in the external sector invariably came from temporary contractions in the aggregate output rather than significant resource reallocation from the non-tradable sector towards the tradable sector. Several transmission mechanisms that relate nominal exchange rate movements to real output fluctuations are also considered.

The link between inflation and output variability in Canada

One of the costs of high levels of in ation may be misperceptions of relative prices and excessive volatility in sectoral output. This paper therefore examines the relationship between the level of inflation and sectoral output growth variability in Canada from 1961:1 to 1995:4. Despite the substantial variation in inflation over this period, we find little evidence of an impact of the level of in ation on variability of sectoral output growth. Our results indicate that the oil price, and the real exchange rate are significantly correlated with the variability of output growth across sectors.

Financing Constraints and Investment Decline in Mexico

To what extent can financing constraints, which have been so central to foreign debt related explanations of investment decline in heavily indebted economies, account for low investment rates in Mexico after 1982? In order to investigate the implications of financing constraints hypothesis on investment decisions, this study employs a cost-of-adjustment model of investment and annual panel data of Mexican manufacturing industries covering the period 1970 to 1990. It is found that part of the debt crisis effects on investment, identified in the earlier literature, may be due to binding financing constraints in Mexico.

On the Terms of Trade and Sectoral Reallocations

A commonly held view is that a small open economy adjusts to a negative external shock by switching both expenditure and resources toward the domestic traded goods sector. We show that, when both labor and imported inputs are used as factors of production, the average labor intensity in the nontraded sector may increase substantially with a decline in the terms of trade. This can lead to an internal transfer of labor into the nontraded sector, and an improvement in the trade balance even with a decline in traded sector output. This result depends on a combination of a high elasticity of substitution across nontraded varieties and large differences in labor intensities in the production of nontraded varieties. Our analysis suggests that intersectoral labor flows are not necessarily a good measure of an economys flexibility, and that intersectoral resource reallocation and expenditure-switching can move in opposite directions.