Imported Intermediate Inputs and Domestic Product Growth

Imported Intermediate Inputs and Domestic Product Growth

Author: Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 27

ISBN-13:

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New goods play a central role in many trade and growth models. We use detailed trade and firm-level data from a large developing economy--India--to investigate the relationship between declines in trade costs, the imports of intermediate inputs and domestic firm product scope. We estimate substantial static gains from trade through access to new imported inputs. Accounting for new imported varieties lowers the exact import price index for intermediate goods on average by an additional 4.7 percent per year relative to conventional gains through lower prices of existing imports. Moreover, we find that lower input tariffs account on average for 31 percent of the new products introduced by domestic firms, which implies potentially large dynamic gains from trade. This expansion in firms' product scope is driven predominately by international trade increasing access of firms to new input varieties rather than by simply making existing imported inputs cheaper. Hence, our findings suggest that an important consequence of the input tariff liberalization was to relax technological constraints through firms' access to new imported inputs that were unavailable prior to the liberalization.


From Firm-Level Imports to Aggregate Productivity

From Firm-Level Imports to Aggregate Productivity

Author: Mr.JaeBin Ahn

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2016-09-06

Total Pages: 32

ISBN-13: 1475533098

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Using the Korean manufacturing firm-level data, this paper confirms that three stylized facts on importing hold in Korea: the ratio of imported inputs in total inputs tends to be procyclical; the use of imported inputs increases productivity; and larger firms are more likely to use imported inputs. As a result, we find that firm-level import decisions explain a non-trivial fraction of aggregate productivity fluctuations in Korea over the period between 2006 and 2012. Main findings of this paper suggest a possible link between the recent global productivity slowdown and the global trade slowdown.


Analyzing the U.S. Content of Imports and the Foreign Content of Exports

Analyzing the U.S. Content of Imports and the Foreign Content of Exports

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2006-04-27

Total Pages: 76

ISBN-13: 030910131X

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Mass media has frequently covered stories concerning "outsourcing" or the moving of U.S. jobs to foreign locations by U.S. multinational companies. More often than not this "outsourcing" is of benefit to the companies' owners and managers. The discussion has spilled over into the political debate with candidates for national office making statements and suggesting policies for dealing with the issue. Due to the fact that many companies have fragmented the production process, however, it is difficult to examine the effect of "outsourcing"- the transfer of a business function from inside a firm to an outside source, with no reference to borders of countries- and "offshoring"-the movement of jobs that had been in the United States to a foreign location, without regard to business ownership- on the U.S. as many imports contain U.S. parts and many exports contain foreign parts. In the current situation, Congress mandated a study by the National Research Council, which was undertaken by the Committee on Analyzing the U.S. Content of Imports and the Foreign Content of Exports under a contract with the U.S. Department of Commerce. Analyzing the U.S. Content of Imports and the Foreign Content of Exports presents the findings of the committee.The committee refers to the availability and quality of data on the foreign content of U.S. exports and the domestic content of U.S. imports as "the content question." This was not been an easy task as data on actual content simply do not exist.


Changing Patterns of Global Trade

Changing Patterns of Global Trade

Author: Nagwa Riad

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2012-01-15

Total Pages: 87

ISBN-13: 1463973101

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Changing Patterns of Global Trade outlines the factors underlying important shifts in global trade that have occurred in recent decades. The emergence of global supply chains and their increasing role in trade patterns allowed emerging market economies to boost their inputs in high-technology exports and is associated with increased trade interconnectedness.The analysis points to one important trend taking place over the last decade: the emergence of China as a major systemically important trading hub, reflecting not only the size of trade but also the increase in number of its significant trading partners.


Evaluating estimates of materials offshoring from U.S. manufacturing

Evaluating estimates of materials offshoring from U.S. manufacturing

Author: Robert C. Feenstra

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 22

ISBN-13:

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When materials offshoring is measured by estimating imported intermediate inputs, a common assumption used is that an industry's imports of each input, relative to its total demand, is the same as the economy-wide imports relative to total demand: this is the so-called "import comparability" or "proportionality" assumption. A report to the National Research Council identified this assumption as being a significant limitation of current data collection and analysis. In this note we move beyond this assumption to obtain a direct measure of imported materials by industry for the United States in 1997. At the 3-digit I-O industry level, there is a correlation of 0.68 between the offshoring shares made with and without the proportionality assumption, and a higher correlation of 0.87 when the shares are value weighted. While most value-weighted industry have differences below 50 percentage points in the two estimates, there is significant number of cases that differ by 10 percentage points or more.


Input-Trade Liberalization and the Demand for Managers

Input-Trade Liberalization and the Demand for Managers

Author: Pavel Chakraborty

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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Can input-trade liberalization increase the demand for managers? Imported inputs are an important source of technology inflows. Previous research on the implications of imported inputs overlooked their potential effect on the demand for managing the new incoming knowledge. Adopting the case of India, this paper presents a first empirical attempt to fill this gap. Using detailed firm-level data that uniquely distinguishes between the compensations of managers and non-managers, and exploiting the exogenous nature of India's Eight-Plan trade reform, we investigate the potential causal link between input-trade liberalization and the demand for managers relative to non-managers. We find that a decrease in input tariffs increases the relative demand for managers, primarily in domestic firms that use the imported inputs to produce intermediate goods. Specifically, a 10% drop in input tariffs induces, on average, a 1-1.5% increase in the compensation share of managers, manifested via increases in both their number as well as average wages and bonuses. These patterns are: (i) observed across the firms' size distribution; (ii) applicable for both exporting and non-exporting firms; (iii) stronger in family-run firms that operate under flexible labor market regulations; (iv) relatively more dominant in the short-run. In addition, we show that unlike changes in input tariffs, import competition does not affect the relative demand for managers.


Firm Innovation and Productivity in Latin America and the Caribbean

Firm Innovation and Productivity in Latin America and the Caribbean

Author: Inter-American Development Bank

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-07-01

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 1349581518

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This volume uses the study of firm dynamics to investigate the factors preventing faster productivity growth in Latin America and the Caribbean, pushing past the limits of traditional macroeconomic analyses. Each chapter is dedicated to an examination of a different factor affecting firm productivity - innovation, ICT usage, on-the-job-training, firm age, access to credit, and international linkages - highlighting the differences in firm characteristics, behaviors, and strategies. By showcasing this remarkable heterogeneity, this collection challenges regional policymakers to look beyond one-size-fits-all solutions and create balanced policy mixes tailored to distinct firm needs. This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO license.