Financial Markets, Industrial Specialization and Comparative Advantage - Evidence from OECD Countries

Due to underlying technological and organizational differences, industries differ in their need for external finance. Since services provided by the financial sector are largely immobile across countries, the pattern of industrial specialization should be influenced by the degree of financial development. We find this effect to be strong. In fact, the financial sector has greater impact on industrial specialization among OECD countries than differences in human and physical capital. We also show that the causality indeed run from the financial sector to specialization. Further, financial sectors are a source of comparative advantage in a way consistent with the Hecksher-Ohlin-Vanek model. Results on which aspects of financial systems that are of importance for specialization and comparative advantage are also presented.Financial intermediation; Financial systems; Specialization patterns; Financial intermediation; Financial systems; Specialization patterns; Comparative advantage

Export Productivity and Specialization in China, Brazil, India and South Africa

This paper analyses the patterns of export productivity and trade specialization profiles in the China, Brazil, India and South Africa, and in other regional groupings. In doing so, the investigation calculates a time varying export productivity measure using highly disaggregated product categories. The findings indicate that export productivity is mainly determined by real income and human capital endowments. Importantly, the study reveals significant differences in the export productivity and specialization patterns of countries with comparable per capita income levels. For instance, China?s export productivity and implied export sophistication is in line with that of countries with higher per capita incomes, including some OECD industrial economies.export productivity, trade specialization, comparative advantage

Regional specialization and trade patterns in Europe.

In the present paper we will study the effects of the construction of an internal market in Europe in 1992. The question to be answered is whether some regions in Europe have improved their positions in the internal EU trade from a better exploitation of their comparative advantages (productivity, factors endowment,...) and scale economies, as far as regions have two main reasons for trade: specialization in those activities they do the best and the exploitation of scale economies. The evolution of inter industrial trade will reveal whether the expectations of some qualified economist of a deeper specialization of northern European regions in human capital-intensive industries and in labour-intensive industries in the southern regions were correct. Besides, the development of intra industrial trade in this decade will prove if the benefits of scale economies were bigger in the south, where they were less exploited at the outset. Finally, we will also analyse the role of foreign direct investment (which can be observed as another way of exports and shares with trade the causal factors) in the reinforcement of specialization patterns across Europe. In this connection, we identify and analyse the evolution of trade patterns in Europe in the 1990´s through the utilization of Grubel-Lloyd index. Secondly, we utilize several indicators of comparative advantages (sectors average productivity, labour costs, human capital endowment, etc.) and of firms size to study whether they have also undergone some changes as a result of the internal market formation. Although the lack of regional data can make us formulate this analysis for countries rather than for regions, whenever necessary we will supplement it with the patterns of regional specialization within the countries, as far as the regional location of export industries can shed some light on this issue.

Effi cient Specialization in Ricardian Production

It is well known that the analysis of efficient specialization in Ricardian production with many countries and many commodities cannot be broken down to the simple case of two countries and two commodities. By drawing on some recent results of convex geometry and the theory of cephoids, this paper characterizes efficient patterns of incomplete specialization in the general case.Ricardian trade; efficient specialization; comparative cost; cephoids; deGua simplexes

Factor-Biased Technical Change and Specialization Patterns

We analyze the medium- and long-run effects of international integration of capital markets on specialization patterns of countries. For that purpose, we incorporate induced technical change into a Heckscher-Ohlin model with a continuum of final goods. This provides a comprehensive theory that explains the dynamics of comparative advantages based on differences in effective factor endowments. Our model constitutes an appropriate framework for understanding the changes in industrial structure of foreign trade observed, e.g., in the CEE countries over the last two decades. In addition, our approach provides a theoretical foundation for the empirical prospective comparative advantage index (Savin and Winker 2009) with new insights into the future dynamics of comparative advantages. Eventually, the model may serve as a basis to set development priorities in countries being in the period of transition.Factor-biased technical change, continuum of goods, comparative advantage, factor mobility, innovation, knowledge spillovers

Technology and Trade - an analysis of technology specialization and export flows

This paper examines how technology specialization, measured by citations-weighted patents, affects trade flows. The paper analyzes (i) the relationship between technology specialization and export specialization across regions and (ii) how the technology specialization of origin and destination affect the size and structure of link-specific export flows. We find that the export specialization of a region typically corresponds to the region’s technology specialization, which supports the view that comparative advantages can be created by investments in technology and knowledge. Export flows from regions to destination countries with similar technology specialization as the origin regions consist of commodities of higher quality in the specific technology, as indicated by higher prices. Highly specialized regions export more and charge higher prices. The results of the paper suggest that an understanding of trade ultimately requires an understanding of the spatial pattern of investments in (and creation of) technology and knowledge, as such investments shape export specialization patterns and the corresponding composition of export flows between locations across space.exports; technology; knowledge; specialization; quality; patents

ANALYSING THE DEGREE OF SPECIALIZATION IN ROMANIA’S SERVICES TRADE

This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of trade specialization in Romania. In particular, the work examines the changes in trade patterns at sectoral level. In order to distinguish between the two types of trade specialization (intersectoral specialization and intra-sectoral trade (IST)) the empirical work was carried out using the Balassa index and the Grubel-Lloyd index. The former examines the degree of inter-sectoral specialization by sector; the latter considers the level of trade specialization between sectors. The empirical results support both the new trade theory, which predicts an increasing level of intra-sectoral trade with liberalization processes, and the new strand of trade theory, which, distinguishing between horizontal and vertical IST, suggests a co-existence between inter- and intra-sectoral trade.services; growth; export performance; specialization

Financial Markets, the Pattern of Specialization and Comparative Advantage. Evidence from OECD countries.

Due to underlying technological differences, industries differ in their need for external finance. Since the services provided by the financial sector are largely immobile across countries, the pattern of specialization should be influenced by the degree of financial development. We find that this effect is strong: The financial sector has an even greater impact on the pattern of specialization among OECD countries than do differences in human- and physical capital. Further, it gives rise to comparative advantage in a way consistent with the Hecksher-Ohlin-Vanek model. Results on which aspects of financial systems that matter for specialization are also presented.Financial intermediation; Financial systems; Specialization patterns; Comparative advantage

Specialization dynamics.

This paper proposes a new empirical framework for analyzing specialization dynamics. A country’s pattern of specialization is viewed as a distribution across sectors, and statistical techniques for analyzing the evolution of this entire distribution are employed. The empirical framework is implemented using data on 20 industries in 7 OECD countries since 1970. We find substantial mobility in patterns of specialization. Over time horizons of 5 years, this is largely explained by forces common across countries including world prices and common changes in technical efficiency. Over longer time horizons, country-specific changes in factor endowments become more important. There is no evidence of an increase in countries’ overall degree of specialization.