This book, drawn from the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP), aims to help readers conduct quantitative analysis of international trade issues in an economy-wide framework. In addition to providing a succinct introduction to the GTAP modeling framework and data base, this book contains seven of the most refined GTAP applications undertaken to date, covering topics ranging from trade policy, to the global implications of environmental policies, factor accumulation and technological change.
Global trade is of vital interest to citizens as well as policymakers, yet it is widely misunderstood. This compact exposition of the market forces underlying international commerce addresses both of these concerned groups, as well as the needs of students and scholars. Although it contains no equations, it is almost mathematical in its elegance, precision, and power of expression. Understanding Global Trade provides a thorough explanation of what shapes the international organization of production and distribution and the resulting trade flows. It reviews the evolution of knowledge in this field from Adam Smith to today as a process of theoretical modeling, accumulation of new empirical data, and then revision of analytical frameworks in response to evidence and changing circumstances. It explains the sources of comparative advantage and how they lead countries to specialize in making products which they then sell to other countries. While foreign trade contributes to the overall welfare of a nation, it also creates winners and losers, and Helpman describes mechanisms through which trade affects a country's income distribution. The book provides a clear and original account of the revolutions in trade theory of the 1980s and the most recent decade. It shows how scholars shifted the analysis of trade flows from the sectoral level to the business-firm level, to elucidate the growing roles of multinational corporations, offshoring, and outsourcing in the international division of labor. Helpman’s explanation of the latest research findings is essential for an understanding of world affairs.
This book presents the technical aspects of an economic model used to examine issues of global economic significance, such as the impact on the world economy of changes in trade and environmental policy. The book provides a number of studies using the model to examine trade reform, growth and investment, climate change, natural resources, technology, and demographic change and migration.
Anecdotal evidence suggests the existence of specific choke points in the global trade network revealed especially after natural disasters (e.g. hard drive components and Thailand flooding, Japanese auto components post-Fukushima, etc.). Using a highly disaggregated international trade database we assess the spillover effects of supply shocks from the import of specific goods. Our goal is to identify inherent vulnerabilities arising from the composition of a country’s import basket and to propose effective mitigation policies. First, using network analysis tools we develop a methodology for evaluating and ranking the supply fragility of individual traded goods. Next, we create a country-level measure to determine each country’s supply shock vulnerability based on the composition of their individual import baskets. This measure evaluates the potential negative supply shock spillovers from the import of each good.
This paper focuses on the sluggish growth of world trade relative to income growth in recent years. The analysis uses an empirical strategy based on an error correction model to assess whether the global trade slowdown is structural or cyclical. An estimate of the relationship between trade and income in the past four decades reveals that the long-term trade elasticity rose sharply in the 1990s, but declined significantly in the 2000s even before the global financial crisis. These results suggest that trade is growing slowly not only because of slow growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but also because of a structural change in the trade-GDP relationship in recent years. The available evidence suggests that the explanation may lie in the slowing pace of international vertical specialization rather than increasing protection or the changing composition of trade and GDP.
conclusion to the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is urgently needed to mitigate the developmental divide by increasing trade between the industrialized and developing worlds. --
Ralph Gomory and William Baumol adapt classical trade models to the modern world economy. In this book Ralph Gomory and William Baumol adapt classical trade models to the modern world economy. Trade today is dominated by manufactured goods, rapidly moving technology, and huge firms that benefit from economies of scale. This is very different from the largely agricultural world in which the classical theories originated. Gomory and Baumol show that the new and significant conflicts resulting from international trade are inherent in modern economies.Today improvement in one country's productive capabilities is often attainable only at the expense of another country's general welfare. The authors describe why and when this is so and why, in a modern free-trade environment, a country might have a vital stake in the competitive strength of its industries.
