The geography of international investment

Much foreign direct investment is between high-income countries, but investment in some developing and transition regions, while still modest, grew rapidly in the 1990s. Adjusting for market size, much investment stays close to home; adjusting for distance, much heads toward the countries with the biggest markets. Foreign direct investment is more geographically concentrated than either exports, or production. Thus, U.S. affiliate production in Europe, is 7 times US exports to Europe; that ratio drops to 4 for all industrial countries, and to 1.6 for developing countries. Multinational activity in high-income countries is overwhelmingly horizontal, involving production for sale to the host country market. In developing countries, a greater proportion of multinational activity is"vertical", involving manufacturing at intermediate stages of production. Thus, only four percent of US affiliate production in the European Union (EU) is sold back to the United States, whereas for developing countries, the figure is eighteen percent, rising to forty percent for Mexico. Similarly, less than ten percent of Japan's affiliate production in the EU is sold back to Japan, compared with more than twenty percent in developing countries. In models of horizontal activity, the decision to go multinational, is a tradeoff between the additional fixed costs involved in setting up a new plant, and the savings in variable costs (transport costs, and tariffs) on exports. In models of vertical activity, direct investment is motivated by differences in factor prices) and discourage it (by making trade between headquarters , and an affiliate more expensive). The major outward investors carry out much horizontal investment in large markets. For US investors, this means Europe, especially the United Kingdom; for Japan and Europe, it means the United States. Most EU investments, however, stay within the EU. The major outward investors carry out much of their vertical investment closer to home: the United States, in Mexico; the EU, in Central and Eastern Europe; Japan, in Asia.Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Labor Policies,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Foreign Direct Investment,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Trade and Regional Integration

Exchange rate overvaluation and trade protection - lessons from experience

Despite a trend toward more flexible rates, more than half the world's countries maintain fixed or managed exchange rates. In the 1980s and 1990s, developing countries as a group progressively liberalized their trade regimes, but some governments defend their exchange rate in actions that run counter to long-run plans for liberalization. Without discussing the relative merits of fixed and flexible exchange rate systems, the authors note that exchange rate management in many countries has resulted in overvaluation of the real exchange rate. Roughly twenty five percent of the countries for which data are available have overvalued exchange rates, with black market premiums from 10 percent to more than 100 percent. After surveying the literature, the authors present lessons from experience about what has worked (or not) in response to crises involving external shocks and external trade deficits - and why. Trying to defend an overvalued exchange rate with protectionist trade policies is a classic pattern, but experience shows such protection does significantly retard the country's growth, and delay its integration into the world trading community. In fact, and overvalued exchange rate is often the root cause of protection, preventing the country from returning to more liberal trade policies that allow growth and integration into the world community without exchange rate adjustment. Most developing countries have downward price and wage rigidities and, with an external trade deficit, require some form of nominal exchange rate adjustment to restore external equilibrium. The authors present cross-country econometric and case study evidence - citing examples from Argentina, Chile, Ghana, The Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Turkey, Uruguay, and Sub-Saharan Africa (including the CFA zone) - that overvalued exchange rates reduce economic growth. Defending the exchange rate, they show, has nor no medium-term benefits, since falling reserves will eventually force devaluation. Better to have devaluation occur without further debilitating losses in reserves and lost productivity because of import controls. After devaluation the exchange rate will reach a new equilibrium, strongly influenced by government and central bank policies.ICT Policy and Strategies,Environmental Economics&Policies,Fiscal&Monetary Policy,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Macroeconomic Management,Environmental Economics&Policies,Achieving Shared Growth,Economic Stabilization,Economic Theory&Research

Developed Country Trade Barriers and the Least Developed Countries: The Economic Results of Freeing Trade

Least Developed Countries, Generalized System of Preferences, Doha Round

French Wine and the U.S. Boycott of 2003: Does Politics Really Affect Commerce?

In early 2003, France actively tried to thwart the plans of the Bush administration to build international support for a war to depose Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein. In response, calls in the United States for a boycott of French products, wine in particular, rebounded through all forms of media. In the spring of 2003, French business people even reported that the boycott calls were hurting their U.S. sales. Using a dataset of sales of nearly 4,700 individual wine brands, we show that there actually was no boycott effect. Rather, sales of French wine dipped for two reasons. First, they experience a cyclical peak at holiday time, from November through early January, and the boycott was called during the February to May period. Second, sales of French wine have been in a secular decline in the United States. Sales in February through May 2003 merely stayed on trend. We contrast our results with other recent work that has found evidence of a boycott effect but that omits the holiday effect from several specifications. French wine producers may be having economic problems, but it is not because of their government's foreign policy.

Engineers and Scientists in U.S. Manufacturing Trade

Using a data set of 72 manufacturing industries, this paper investigates the link between trade and skills by looking at the employment of engineers and scientists in manufacturing and the export success of the products they make. Major results are that the world buys U.S. manufactures that use engineering and scientific skill intensively in their production. The U.S. also imports these types of goods, though to a lesser degree. In addition, engineering and science content of U.S. manufacturing trade is becoming more important. Industries are using more engineers and scientists, out there also has been increased demand for engineering- and science-based goods, more so for exports than imports. Policies recommended include skill upgrading of the population through increased training of the less skilled and no new restrictions on the immigration of skilled foreigners.Exports; Import; Manufactures; Manufacturing; Trade

International Trade and Wage Inequality in the United States: Some New Results

This paper shows that theory and evidence are more supportive of the link between increasing trade with developing countries and increasing U.S. wage inequality than recent criticisms have led many to believe. Much of the current debate focuses on the idea that relative goods prices must change for relative wages to change. The paper first demonstrates several additional channels through which an expansion of North-South trade causes a fall in the relative wage of unskilled workers in the North, even when there are no changes in relative output prices. It then explores the wage implications of a counterfactual in which U.S. trade with developing countries in 1990 remains the same as that in 1978. Changes in trade with developing countries are shown to have widened wages between low-skilled and high-skilled workers by 3.4 to 5.4 percent. Finally, it investigates changing relative prices and finds strong evidence that, in fact, from 1978 to 1995, value added and output prices in unskilled-intensive manufacturing sectors fell considerably relative to prices in skill-intensive manufacturing sectors