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We investigate theoretically and empirically the role of wholesalers in mediating the productivity effects of trade liberalization. Intermediaries provide indirect access to foreign produced inputs. The productivity effects of input tariff cuts on firms that do not directly import therefore depends on the extent that wholesalers are a feature of input supply within an industry. Using firm level data from China, we document that wholesalers play no such role for direct importers. However, other firms experience productivity gains from reducing input tariffs if trade intermediation of foreign inputs within their sector is high. They suffer efficiency losses otherwise.
This paper reassesses the impact of trade liberalization on productivity. We build a new, unique database of effective tariff rates at the country-industry level for a broad range of countries over the past two decades. We then explore both the direct effect of liberalization in the sector considered, as well as its indirect impact in downstream industries via input linkages. Our findings point to a dominant role of the indirect input market channel in fostering productivity gains. A 1 percentage point decline in input tariffs is estimated to increase total factor productivity by about 2 percent in the sector considered. For advanced economies, the implied potential productivity gains from fully eliminating remaining tariffs are estimated at around 1 percent, on average, which do not factor in the presumably larger gains from removing existing non-tariff barriers. Finally, we find strong evidence of complementarities between trade and FDI liberalization in boosting productivity. This calls for a broad liberalization agenda that cuts across different areas.
This paper studies the impact of trade liberalization on productivity. It shows that when intermediate inputs are not highly differentiated, lowering input tariffs leads to a rise in within-firm productivity and wages, and lowering output tariffs has the opposite effect. When intermediate inputs are highly differentiated, the conclusions reverse. These predictions are supported by the data, given by the industrial survey from INEGI (Mexico's Insitituto Nacional de Estadistica Geografia e Informacion) in the period 1984-90. The paper yields estimates for the elasticity of substitution among intermediate inputs, which are useful in determining the direction of the impact of trade liberalization. These estimates can be used to assess the gains from trade liberalization.
This chapter reviews the empirical economics literature on the impact of trade liberalization on firms' innovation-related outcomes. We define and examine four types of shocks to trade flows: import competition, export opportunities, access to imported intermediates, and foreign input competition. Our review reveals interesting heterogeneities at the country and firm levels. In emerging countries, trade liberalization appears to spur productivity and innovation. In developed countries, export opportunities and access to imported intermediates tend to encourage innovation, but the evidence on import competition is mixed, especially for firms in the United States. At the firm level, the positive effects of trade on innovation are more pronounced at the initially more productive firms while the negative effects are more pronounced at the initially less productive firms.
This paper develops a general equilibrium model of multi-product firms and analyzes their behavior during trade liberalization. Firm productivity in a given product is modeled as a combination of firm-level "ability" and firm-product-level "expertise", both of which are stochastic and unknown prior to the firm's payment of a sunk cost of entry. Higher firm-level ability raises a firm's productivity across all products, which induces a positive correlation between a firm's intensive (output per product) and extensive (number of products) margins. Trade liberalization fosters productivity growth within and across firms and in aggregate by inducing firms to shed marginally productive products and forcing the lowest-productivity firms to exit. Though exporters produce a smaller range of products after liberalization, they increase the share of products sold abroad as well as exports per product. All of these adjustments are shown to be relatively more pronounced in countries' comparative advantage industries.
This paper presents theory and evidence from Chinese firm-product data that, given firm productivity, trade liberalization increases product markups. This finding calls for a reconsideration of the well-established imports-as-market-discipline hypothesis. This paper further verifies underlying mechanisms behind this finding: input tariff reductions decrease marginal costs, and tariff effects on markup adjustments are more profound among firms of higher import dependence. By comparing results for two trade regimes -- ordinary trade wherein firms pay import tariffs to import, and processing trade wherein firms are not subject to import tariffs -- this paper finds that the aforementioned effects only apply to ordinary trade.
The literature on trade liberalization has recently shifted its attention from trade liberalization in imported final goods to studying the effects of trade liberalization in imported intermediate inputs. This emphasis fits very well the trade liberalization experience of China following its accession to the WTO in 2001. We build a multi-sector heterogenous-firm model with trade in both intermediate goods and final goods, and we ask: How do final-goods producers respond to trade liberalization in imported inputs? Do they respond differently across sectors? How do firms respond differently to trade liberalization in imported-outputs instead? We decompose the total effect of trade liberalization into those caused by inter-sectoral resource allocation (IRA) and by within-sector selection of firms according to productivity (which we call Melitz selection effect). It is the IRA effect that gives rise to differential impacts of trade liberalization in different sectors. These impacts include changes in the probability of entry into the export market, the fraction of firms that export and the share of export revenue. We test our hypotheses using Chinese firm-level data for the years after China's accession to WTO in 2001. The results generally support our hypotheses.
This paper studies the impact of input-trade liberalization on firms' decision to upgrade foreign technology embodied in imported capital goods. The empirical analysis is motivated by a simple theoretical framework of endogenous technology adoption, heterogeneous firms and imported inputs. The model predicts a positive effect of input tariff reductions on firms' technology choice to source capital goods from abroad. This effect is heterogeneous across firms depending on their initial productivity level. Relying on India's trade liberalization episode in the early 1990s, this paper demonstrates that the probability of importing capital goods is higher for firms producing in industries that have experienced greater cuts on tariffs on intermediate goods. Only those firms in the middle range of the initial productivity distribution have benefited from input-trade liberalization to upgrade their technology.
Using a panel of firm-level data, this paper examines the effects of India's trade reforms in the early 1990s on firm productivity in the manufacturing sector, focusing on the interaction between this policy shock and firm and environment characteristics. The rapid and comprehensive tariff reductions-part of an IMF-supported adjustment program with India in 1991-allow us to establish a causal link between variations in inter-industry and intertemporal tariffs and consistently estimated firm productivity. Specifically, reductions in trade protectionism lead to higher levels and growth of firm productivity, with this effect strongest for private companies. Interestingly, state-level characteristics, such as labor regulations, investment climate, and financial development, do not appear to influence the effect of trade liberalization on firm productivity.
"This thesis investigates the impacts of changes in the trading environment on the behavior and performance of exportingfirms and of firms that import intermediate inputs. The thesis consists of three essays. Each essay contributesboth a theoretical development and an empirical analysis, using large scaled micro data from multiple sources. Thefirst essay studies how increased import penetration of inputs affects firms’ optimal mark-up and industry concentration.A theoretical model is developed to show how firms, operating under monopolistic competition, may choose toincur a fixed cost of foreign sourcing in order to replace some domestically sourced input with more efficient foreignsubstitutes. It is shown that changes in variable trade costs not only affect firms’ importing decision but also thenumber and identity of firms in the market and ultimately markups and market structure. We find evidence of a positiverelationship between imported input penetration and markup: the average markup rises when import penetrationincreases following a reduction in trade costs. The second essay develops a two-stage theoretical model to investigatehow firms’ decision on the number of varieties to export (i.e., their export scope) depends on exchange rate volatilityand on other characteristics of the destination countries. In the model, in the first stage, multi-product firms decide ontheir optimal product scope (the number of varieties to be produced for exporting), incurring fixed investment costs.In the second stage, they decide on the export scope for each destination country, based on country-specific tradecosts and expectation of idiosyncratic exchange rate shocks. Firms reduce their export scope to destination countriesthat suffer negative demand shocks, but they cannot increase their export scope beyond the production scope that theyhave chosen in the first stage. Using Chinese customs transaction data, we are able to provide empirical evidence thatsupports the predictions of our theoretical model. The third essay studies the effect of foreign tariff reductions on the adjustment of average quality and export scope of multi-product exporting firms, using China’s firm-level microdata and highly disaggregated customs data from 2000 to 2006. We find that in response to tariff cuts in destinationcountries, exporting firms upgrade product quality and adjust export scope. Our finding provides a novel explanationof what the phenomenon called incomplete tariff pass-through. A fall in the tariff rate seems to be associated with anincrease in the tariff-inclusive prices, but this is because the price data has not been adjusted to reflect the increase inproduct quality"--