Imports are increasingly becoming a significant source of Japan’s pork supply. Japan’s share of imports to total consumption increased from 9 percent in 1980 to 24 percent in 1990, reaching a maximum of 44 percent in 1996. Under the World Trade Organization (WTO) safeguard provisions for pork, Japan can raise its gate price by 24 percent when imports in a given quarter are 119 percent higher th...

One of the most striking aspects of the recent recession is the collapse in international trade. This paper uses disaggregated data on U.S. imports and exports to shed light on the anatomy of this collapse. We find that the recent reduction in trade relative to overall economic activity is far larger than in previous downturns. Information on quantities and prices of both domestic absorption an...

To what extent can exporters cushion the impact of currency appreciation shocks by using imported intermediates? We apply a partial equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms. Producers can serve the domestic market, export final goods, or import inputs. In the model, an exogenous exchange rate shock simultaneously affects the variable costs and revenues associated with exports and imports. The...

This paper investigates the impact of inward investment by foreign-owned companies on technical progress and hence labour productivity in the UK manufacturing sector. Using an industry-level panel data set we find that foreign-owned firms have a significant positive effect on the level of technical efficiency in domestic firms. There is evidence of significant intra-industry and inter-industry ...

Each year over 140 million tons of petroleum-based polymers are produced worldwide and used in the production of such plasticsaspolyethylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride, polyurethane, and others. Mostly using oil, coal, and natural gas as raw materials for their manufacturing, these plastics are common in every facet of our lives from the pharmaceutical industry to household use. Approxima...

Although research and development is widely considered to be an important source of growth, relatively little is known about how its effects differ across industries. This is mainly because much research on the effect of R&D has used either cross-section or timeseries data and the remainder has mostly looked at the effect of R&D on panels of firms. This paper constructs a heterogeneous dynamic ...

Brazil was characterised by a marked process of trade liberalisation in the ‘90s, resulting in a dramatic increase in the volumes of exports and imports since the year 2000.Over the same period, the relative demand for skilled labour has increased substantially. To investigate whether these two simultaneous phenomena are linked is the purpose of this paper. More in particular, this study focuse...

Standard neo-classical trade theory predicts that trade liberalisation should cause a fall in wage inequality in developing countries through a decrease in the relative demand for skilled labour. Recent studies of a number of developing countries, however, find evidence to the contrary. Using a panel of manufacturing firms in the 1990s we investigate whether skill-biased technological change in...

WTO Accession and Performance of Chinese Manufacturing Firms* China’s policy-makers argued that WTO accession and the accompanying trade liberalization would have a beneficial impact on the domestic economy. China’s import tariffs differed tremendously across industry in the earlier years, but converged to an almost uniform low level after WTO entry. We exploit sectoral variation in the extent ...

This paper discusses the occurrence of skill-enhancing technology import, namely the relationship between imports of embodied technology and widening skill-based employment di¤erentials in low and middle-income countries. GMM techniques are applied to an original panel dataset comprising 28 manufacturing sectors for 23 countries over a decade. Econometric results provide robust evidence of the ...