| 1. |
- Bourdet, Yves, et al.
(författare)
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Completing the EU Customs Union. The Effects of Trade Procedure Harmonization
- 2010
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- A main component of customs unions is a common trade policy on imports from non-member countries. Trade policy covers both tariff and non-tariff barriers like trade procedures. We argue that since trade procedures vary markedly across EU countries, the EU is not, strictly speaking, a customs union. To illustrate this, we estimate the impact of trade procedures on exports from non-EU countries and find a highly statistically significant and negative effect. Simulating what the effects would be of harmonizing trade procedures, i.e. to actually complete the EU customs union, we find that aggregated exports to the EU would increase by 20 percent for the average exporter.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Hess, Wolfgang, et al.
(författare)
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Exploring the Duration of EU Imports
- 2010
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The objective of this paper is twofold. First, against the background of an existing empirical literature on the duration of trade which has found that international trade is often of strikingly short duration, we aim to establish whether or not EU imports from the rest of the world also are short-lived. Second, since there is at this point no clear commonly accepted theoretical explanation for these short trade durations, we seek to provide a thorough empirical description and analysis of the phenomenon, with the intention of thereby facilitating theoretical developments on the subject. We employ a rich data set of detailed imports to the EU15 countries from 140 exporters, covering the time period 1962-2006. Using these data, we begin by conducting a thorough descriptive analysis of the duration of EU imports. Thereafter, we perform a regression analysis using discrete-time duration models with proper controls for unobserved heterogeneity. We draw the conclusion that EU imports are indeed very short-lived – in fact, possibly more so than, for example, US imports. The median duration of EU imports is for example merely one year, and almost 60 percent of all spells cease during the first year of service. Among our empirical findings are (i) that the duration of trade remains stable across the long time period that we study; (ii) that short trade durations are the result of at least two processes: countries shifting between different suppliers but continuing to import a given product, and countries ceasing to import the product altogether; and (iii) that countries with a diversified export structure also will tend to have more long-lived export flows. In our formal regression, we are also able to find a set of explanatory variables that have statistically significant effects on the probability that trade flows die.
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| 6. |
- Hess, Wolfgang, et al.
(författare)
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The Duration of Trade Revisited. Continuous-Time vs. Discrete-Time Hazards
- 2011
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The recent literature on the duration of trade has predominantly analyzed the determinants of trade flow durations using Cox proportional hazards models. The purpose of this paper is to show why it is inappropriate to analyze the duration of trade with continuous-time models such as the Cox model, and to propose alternative discrete-time models which are more suitable for estimation. Briefly, the Cox model has three major drawbacks when applied to large trade data sets. First, it faces problems in the presence of many tied duration times, leading to biased coefficient estimates and standard errors. Second, it is difficult to properly control for unobserved heterogeneity, which can result in spurious duration dependence and parameter bias. Third, the Cox model imposes the restrictive and empirically questionable assumption of proportional hazards. By contrast, with discrete-time models there is no problem handling ties; unobserved heterogeneity can be controlled for without difficulty; and the restrictive proportional hazards assumption can easily be bypassed. By replicating an influential study by Besedeš and Prusa from 2006, but employing discrete-time models as well as the original Cox model, we find empirical support for each of these arguments against the Cox model. Moreover, when comparing estimation results obtained from a Cox model and our preferred discrete-time specification, we find significant differences in both the predicted hazard rates and the estimated effects of explanatory variables on the hazard. In other words, the choice between models affects the conclusions that can be drawn.
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| 9. |
- Persson, Maria, et al.
(författare)
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Building Bridges: The Effect of Major Infrastructure Development on Trade
- 2022
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We provide evidence of a positive effect of major infrastructure development on international trade, using the opening of the fixed link between Denmark and Sweden in 2000 (The Oresund Bridge) as a quasi-natural experiment. Our Synthetic Control Method (SCM) constructs a counterfactual Danish-Swedish trade relationship, which represents bilateral trade in the absence of the bridge. Evaluating actual trade against its synthetic counterpart for the period 2001-2008 shows that Danish-Swedish trade was 24.6% larger than it would have been in the absence of the bridge using our preferred specification. The result is robust to standard sensitivity checks. We supplement our analysis with a standard Difference-in-differences (DiD) estimator, which uses fixed effects. The DiD estimator yields a slightly larger trade effect of 26.7%, and is robust to a number of sensitivity analyses, including estimation at the product level. Both our SCM and DiD point to the trade-boosting effects being gradual.
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| 10. |
- Persson, Maria, et al.
(författare)
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EU Trade Preferences and Export Diversification
- 2013
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Since at least the 1960s, the European Union (EU) has offered various kinds of non-reciprocal trade preferences for developing countries. Originally, these trade preferences had at least two policy goals: (i) to increase export volumes for developing countries and thereby boost their export earnings, and (ii) to facilitate export diversification. While extensive research has confirmed that the first of these goals is typically met, the second goal seems to have been largely forgotten by researchers as well as in policy circles. The aim of this paper is therefore to analyse the impact of the EU’s non-reciprocal trade preferences for developing countries on export diversification. Our estimation results suggest that some trade preference programs, such as the Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP), are associated with increasing ranges of export products. By contrast, preferences offered to Mediterranean countries typically have no significant effects, and African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) preferences actually have negative effects toward the end of our time period, suggesting that ACP countries may respond to preferences by specializing into fewer goods.
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