Vanessa Strauss-Kahn

Export Diversification: What's behind the Hump?

The paper explores the evolution of export diversification patterns along the economic development path. Using a large database with 156 countries over 19 years at the HS6 level of disaggregation (4,991 product lines), we look for action at the intensive and extensive margins. We find a hump-shaped pattern of export diversification similar to what Imbs and Wacziarg (2003) found for production. Diversification and subsequent reconcentration take place mostly along the extensive margin. This hump-shaped pattern is consistent with the conjecture that countries travel across diversification cones, as discussed in Schott (2003, 2004) and Xiang (2007).

Why and where do headquarters move

This paper analyzes decisions regarding the location of headquarters in the U.S. for the period 1996-2001. Using a unique [fi]rm-level database of about 30,000 U.S. headquarters, we study the [fi]rm- and location-speci[fi]c characteristics of headquarters that relocated over that period. Headquarters are concentrated, increasingly so in medium-sized service-oriented metropolitan areas, and the rate of relocation is signi[fi]cant (5% a year). Larger (in terms of sales) and younger headquarters tend to relocate more often, as well as larger (in terms of the number of headquarters) and foreign [fi]rms, and [fi]rms that are the outcome of a merger. Headquarters relocate to metropolitan areas with good airport facilities--with a dramatic impact, low corporate taxes, low average wages, high level of business services, same industry specialization, and agglomeration of headquarters in the same sector of activity--with all agglomeration variables having an important and signi[fi]cant impact.

Trade Diversification, Income, And Growth: What Do We Know?

This paper surveys the empirical literature on export and import diversification and its linkages with growth. We review widely used measures of diversification and the evidence about their evolution focusing on how export diversification relates to trade liberalization and economic development. We also discuss the linkages between trade diversification and productivity at the firm and industry level, highlighting new advances on the linkages between import diversification and productivity.

OECD Imports: Diversification and Quality Search

This paper explores the evolution of OECD imports over time and as a function of income levels, measuring the concentration of those imports across origin countries at the product level. We find evidence of diversification followed, in the very last years of the sample period (post-2000), by a slight reconcentration. This reconcentration is entirely explained by the growing importance of Chinese products in OECD imports. We also find evidence of relatively more volatile concentration levels for differentiated goods, consistent with a simple model of adverse selection and screening of suppliers by OECD buyers. Finally, we find that “accession” to OECD markets occurs directly (rather than after acquiring prior export experience on other markets) for more than half of the (extra-OECD) exporter/product pairs, but that one to eight years of experience enhances subsequent survival on OECD markets. Exports that reach OECD markets after more than eight years of experience elsewhere tend to survive less.

Input-Trade Liberalization, Export Prices and Quality Upgrading

This paper explores the impact of input-trade liberalization on imported input and exported product prices. Using Chinese transaction data for 2000-2006, we capture causal effects between exogenous input tarif reductions and within firm changes in HS6 traded product prices. Identifcation is based on a quasi-natural experiment where some forms are exempt from paying tariffs and stand as a control group. Both imported input and export prices rise. The effect on export prices is specific to forms sourcing inputs from developed economies and exporting output to high-income countries. Results are consistent with a scenario within which forms exploit the input tariff cuts to access high-quality inputs in order to quality-upgrade their exports.

Globalization and Wage Premia: Reconciling Facts and Theory

This paper analyzes the e¤ect of globalization on wage premia by studying the interaction between trade costs, firms’ location decision, and relative demand for labor. It suggests that globalization, through vertical specialization and/or agglomeration, increases inequality in countries with a relative abundance of skilled workers in a way that is observationally equivalent to skilled-biased technological progress (i.e., joint increases in the wage premium and the within-industry skilled–unskilled employment ratio). This confirms the potential role of international trade in explaining the observed increase in wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers that has occurred in most industrialized countries since the mid- 1970s. Calibration of the model supports this result. It shows that NAFTA has contributed significantly to the observed increase in the U.S. wage premium.