Why are Retail Prices in Japan so High?: Evidence from German Export Prices

It is well documented that retail prices in Japan are higher than in other countries for similar products. The two main competing explanations for this finding are: (1) a relatively high degree of discriminatory practices against imports and (2) relatively high distribution costs associated with getting goods to the point of final sale in Japan. The first of these explanations implies that foreign exporters should charge higher prices on shipments to Japan than elsewhere, provided at least some of the rent associated with restrictive practices can be captured by the exporter. For the vast majority of the 37 7-digit German export industries studied here, the data are consistent with this implication. Prices on shipments to Japan appear to be significantly higher than prices on shipments to the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

Macroeconomic Factors and Antidumping Filings: Evidence from Four Countries

This paper examines the relationship between antidumping filings and macroeconomic factors. We show that real exchange rate fluctuations affect the two criteria for dumping in opposite ways, making the overall effect on filings ambiguous in theory. Interestingly, no such ambiguity is evidenced in the data. Examining the filing patterns of the four major users of AD law during the 1980--98 period we find that real exchange rates and domestic real GDP growth both have statistically significant impacts on filings. Bilateral filing data indicate that a one-standard deviation real appreciation of the domestic currency increases filings by 33% while a one-standard deviation fall in domestic real GDP increases filings by 23%.

Measuring Market-Product Integration

Globalization -- the integration of national economies -- has become one of the most widely used buzzwords of the late 20th century. Yet there are remarkably few statistical measures of product-market integration across time, countries, and goods. In this paper we present some new measures of product-market integration based on price and quantity data. We find evidence of greater integration, but we also find that this process has not been uniform over time, countries, or goods.

Measuring the Intensity of Competition in Export Markets

This paper develops an approach to measuring the intensity of competition in international markets. The method measures the degree of 'outside' competition faced by exporters located in one source country from firms located outside the source country. We use the elasticity of price and quantity to exchange rate shocks, which shift the relative costs of producers from a particular source country, to calculate our measure of outside competition. The measures are estimated using panel data on exports of U.S. linerboard and German beer to a variety of destination markets. The destination-specific panel data allow comparisons of outside competition across destination markets.

Causes and Consequences of the Export Enhancement Program for Wheat

This paper uses regression analysis to study the causes and impacts of the Export Enhancement Program for wheat. We find that the overwhelming causes of the EEP, faltering export markets and swelling government stocks are primarily attributable to the overvaluation of the dollar in the 1980s, not the increase in EC subsidies to wheat farmers in 1985. We also find that what had been a fairly robust relationship between export shares, exchange rates, and loan rates broke down after 1985, probably due to a variety of changes in farm policy. In any case, export shares did not rebound in spite of the weaker dollar and the implementation of the EEP in the post-1985 period.

International Comparisons of Pricing-to-Market Behavior

This paper measures the degree of price discrimination across export destinations that is associated with exchange rate changes using U.S., U.K., German and Japanese industry-level data. Given the industries sampled more price discrimination across destinations is observed in the U.K., German and Japanese data. For industries that match across source countries, however, behavior is very similar across source countries. Furthermore, destination-specific price adjustment on exports to the U.S. from Germany and Japan is similar to price adjustment observed on shipments to other destinations. Most variation in the data appears to be related to industry.

Exchange Rates and Corporate Pricing Strategies

This paper reviews the recent literature on pass-through and pricing-to-market. Pricing-to market behavior is estimated for a new, larger data set with 60 German and 20 U.S. 7-digit industries. The results conform closely to what has been found elsewhere in smaller detailed data sets and at higher levels of aggregation. German exporters show more tendency to price-to-market than U.S. exporters for the sample of industries studied, but there is much variation across the industries. Surprisingly, pricing-to-market is more pronounced in German exports of steel and chemicals than in consumer goods.

The Segmentation of International Markets: Evidence from The Economist

This paper studies the behavior of newsstand prices for The Economist magazine in eight markets. Substantial variations in markups across markets are related to exchange rate fluctuations. Some of this variation can be traced to menu costs. However, much of the variation appears to result from intentional price discrimination across three regions: the U.S., the U.K., and Continental Europe and Scandinavia. Differences in demand elasticities can plausibly be attributed to differences in preferences and the set of competing products across markets. Segmentation of the markets is facilitated by the time-sensitive nature of the product which makes arbitrage very costly.