Vicente Donoso

Do Differences in the Exposure to Chinese Imports Lead to Differences in Local Labour Market Outcomes? An Analysis for Spanish Provinces

Donoso V., Martín V. and Minondo A. Do differences in the exposure to Chinese imports lead to differences in local labour market outcomes? An analysis for Spanish provinces, Regional Studies. In the period 1999–2007 Spanish imports from China multiplied six times, making that Asian country the fourth largest supplier to the Spanish economy. This paper analyses whether this massive increase in imports impacted on the labour markets of Spanish provinces to differing degrees, due to differences in their initial productive specialization. The results show that Spanish provinces with a higher exposure to Chinese imports experienced larger drops in manufacturing employment as a share of the working-age population. However, this reduction was compensated for by increases in non-manufacturing employment.

Current account sustainability in Latin America

This paper examines the sustainability of the current account deficit in eighteen Latin American countries through the analysis of the stationarity properties of the current account balance. First, we apply traditional unit root tests and consider the possibility of structural breaks. Second, since the current account may have a nonlinear behaviour, we test for linearity in the data and analyse current account stationarity by means of a recently developed nonlinear unit root test. Results from linear and nonlinear unit root tests show that current account sustainability is supported for the majority of Latin American countries with the exception of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Paraguay. For the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela the current account dynamics are best described by a stationary linear model, and by a stationary linear model with a mean shift in years 2003, 1982 and 1980 in Bolivia, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, respectively. In the case of Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador and Guatemala, results show that the current account is best described by a mean-reverting nonlinear process.