Tomasz Kamil Michalski

Do countries falsify economic data strategically? Some evidence that they might.

Using Benfords law, we find evidence supporting the hypothesis that countries at times misreport their economic data strategically. We group countries with similar economic conditions and find that for countries with fixed exchange rate regimes, high negative net foreign asset positions, negative current account balances, or more vulnerable to capital flow reversals, we reject the first-digit law for the balance-of-payments data. This corroborates the intuition of a simple economic model. The main results do not seem to be driven by countries in sub-Saharan Africa or those with low institutional quality ratings.

Do Countries Falsify Economic Data Strategically? Some Evidence that They Do

We find evidence supporting the hypothesis that countries at times misreport their economic data in a strategic manner. Among those suspected are countries with fixed exchange rate regimes, high negative net foreign asset positions or negative current account balances, which corroborates the intuition developed with a simple economic model. We also find that countries with bad institutional quality rankings and those in Africa, Middle East, Eastern Europe and Latin America release economic data of questionable veracity. Our evidence calls for models with public signals to consider strategic misinformation and for establishing independent statistical agencies to assure the delivery of high quality economic data.

U.S. Banking Integration and State-Level Exports

Using inter-state banking deregulation in the U.S. as an exogenous experiment, the authors find that a 1% increase in banking integration between U.S. states caused a 0.164-0.184% increase in the foreign exports/domestic shipments ratio for U.S. state level exports in the years 1992-1996. They can ascribe these effects to the integration by banks with foreign assets: a 1% increase in banking integration through such banks caused the exports/domestic shipments ratio to increase by 0.22-0.41% while the expansion of banks with purely domestic assets appears to have no impact. Given the empirical specification, this increase in openness can be attributed to an increase in capital to cover variable and fixed export costs relative to domestic shipping costs and a higher provision of trade finance services. Serving new destinations (the extensive margin defined at the state-country level) accounts for 22% to 28% of the banking integration effect that the authors observe.

Should Small Countries Fear Deindustrialization

Will small countries deindustrialize when opening up to trade with large countries? Donald Davis (1998 ) shows that for the home market effect to lead to deindustrialization of small countries, trade costs for homogeneous goods must be sufficiently smaller than trade costs in differentiated goods, a condition which is not supported by empirical evidence. We show that if differentiated goods production uses tradable inputs small countries can become deindustrialized when trading with a sufficiently large country and if trade costs are low. Copyright

Should small countries fear deindustrialization

Will small countries deindustrialize when opening up to trade with large countries? Donald Davis (1998 ) shows that for the home market effect to lead to deindustrialization of small countries, trade costs for homogeneous goods must be sufficiently smaller than trade costs in differentiated goods, a condition which is not supported by empirical evidence. We show that if differentiated goods production uses tradable inputs small countries can become deindustrialized when trading with a sufficiently large country and if trade costs are low. Copyright

Quality Assurance and the Home Market Effect

The home market effect is considered as a distinguishing feature of models of trade with increasing returns to scale in production and imperfect competition. However, some empirical studies found the existence of home market effect even in constant returns to scale industries. In this paper we build a model of intra-industry trade based upon quality assurance and show the existence of the home market effect without increasing returns in the production technology. This throws into question the rationale of empirical studies attempting to validate the increasing returns model of trade based upon testing the existence of the home market effect.

Financial Integration and Growth: Banks' Previous Industry Exposure Matters

Using U.S. interstate banking deregulations, we identify the effect of banks’ prior to market-entry industry exposures on the state-level manufacturing sector growth. Examining industry value added, gross operating surplus, total compensation, number of employees, output per employee and wages, we find that the larger the discrepancy in specialization in an industry between a state-pair, the higher is the impact of banking integration on the growth of that sector in the less specialized state. Our results indicate that a banking channel shapes the states’ industrial landscape. Banks prior exposure to different sectors appears to have important consequences for regional economic integration.

Input substitutability,trade costs and the product cycle

I exhibit a simple and realistic feature of technology and trade costs that influences the partition of manufacturing between the North and South depending on the degree of substitutability of internationally traded inputs in production. In the presence of higher wages in the North, when production of manufacturing goods requires tradeable, country-specic Ricardian inputs,goods with a low elasticity of substitution between inputs in production will have lower costs of manufacturing in the North and those with a high elasticity in the South.