Globalization, Peripherality and Regional Unemployment Divergence

The cultural and geographic proximity between two regions otherwise very distant (both in terms of factor endowment and of specialization pattern) makes the wage perceived as fair in the peripheral region dependent on the wage prevailing in the core region. As a consequence, the peripheral wage is too high and unemployment results. This problem is exacerbated by the greater international division of labor brought about by globalization, which increases the coriperiphery labor productivity gap and so brings about a surge in unemployment in the periphery. Hence, this paper challenges, in a regional context, the view that a finer division of labor reduces unemployment, and offers an explanation of the growing differentials in the regional rates of unemployment observed in many EU countries in the last decades.regional unemployment, international division of labor, efficiency wages, Europe

Increasing returns, imperfect competition and factor prices

We show how, in general equilibrium models featuring increasing returns, imperfect competition and endogenous markups, changes in the scale of economic activity affect income distribution across factors. Whenever final goods are gross-substitutes (gross- complements), a scale expansion raises (lowers) the relative reward of the scarce factor or the factor used intensively in the sector characterized by a higher degree of product differentiation and higher fixed costs. Under very reasonable hypothesis, our theory suggests that scale is skill-biased. This result provides a microfoundation for the secular increase in the relative demand for skilled labor. Moreover, it constitutes an important link among major explanations for the rise in wage inequality: skill-biased technical change, capital-skill complementarities and international trade. We provide new evidence on the mechanism underlying the skill bias of scale.Endogenous Markups, Pro-competitive E¤ect, Income Distribution, Trade Models with Imperfect Competition, Wage Inequality

The skill bias of world trade

Under plausible assumptions about preferences and technology, the model in this paper suggests that the entire volume of world trade matters for wage inequality. Therefore, trade integration, even among identical countries, is likely to increase the skill premium. Further, we argue that empirical evidence of a falling relative price of skill-intensive goods can be reconciled with the fast growth of world trade and that the intersectoral mobility of capital exacerbates the effect of trade on inequality. We provide new empirical evidence in support of our results and a quantitative assessment of the skill bias of world trade.Skill Premium, Scale E.ect, Intra-Industry and Inter-Industry Trade

Productivity, Quality and Export Behavior (Revised version of: Firm-Export Intensity and Productivity, September 2011)

We study, both theoretically and empirically, how export intensity (the ratio of exports to sales) is related to firm productivity. Using a representative sample of Italian manufacturing firms, we find that Total Factor Productivity (TFP) is strongly negatively correlated with export intensity to low-income destinations and uncorrelated with export intensity to high-income destinations, conditional on exporting. To account for these facts, which are not easily predicted by existing heterogeneous-firms models, we extend the Melitz’s (2003) model by allowing for endogenous product quality and for non-iceberg trade costs. Under plausible assumptions, our model predicts that the elasticity of export intensity to productivity is increasing in per capita income of the foreign destinations and decreasing in their distance. We find that these two variables can jointly explain the sign, size and ranking of the TFP elasticities of export intensity across individual foreign destinations.EHeterogeneous Firms; Productivity; Quality; Export Shares; Structural Estimation

GATT-Think with Asymmetric Countries

We argue that, in the presence of asymmetric countries, a trade agreement that conforms to GATT’s reciprocity rule allows the (stronger) less trade dependent country to improve its welfare relative to both the free trade and the trade war. Conversely, the (weaker) more trade dependent country cannot reach the free trade welfare level under reciprocity, although its welfare improves relative to the trade war. Reciprocity is so unfavorable to the weaker country that it may be worse off under reciprocity than under the Nash bargaining solution, a ‘power-based’ approach to trade negotiations that reflects power asymmetries among trading partners. Our results question Bagwell and Staiger (1999, 2000)’s view of reciprocity as a rule that “serves to mitigate the influence of power asymmetries on negotiated outcomes”.Reciprocity; Trade negotiations; Trade dependence; Nash bargaining solution

Trade, markup heterogeneity and misallocations

We argue that the procompetitive effect of international trade may bring about significant welfare costs that have not been recognized. We formulate a stylized general equilibrium model with a continuum of imperfectly competitive industries to show that, under plausible conditions, a trade-induced increase in competition can actually amplify monopoly distortions. This happens because trade, while lowering the average level of market power, may increase its cross-sectoral dispersion. Using data on US industries, we document a dramatic increase in the dispersion of market power overtime. We also show evidence that trade might be responsible for it and provide some quantifications of the induced welfare cost. Our results suggest that, to avoid some unpleasant effects of globalization, trade integration should be accompanied by procompetitive reforms (i.e., deregulation) in the nontraded sectors.Markups, Dispersion of Market Power, Procompetitive Effect, Trade and Welfare

Productivity, Quality, and Export Intensities

We study how firm and foreign market characteristics affect the geographic distribution of exporter' sales. To this purpose, we use export intensities (the ratio of exports to sales) across destinations as our key measures of firms'relative involvement in heterogeneous foreign markets. In a representative sample of Italian manufacturing firms, we find a robust negative correlation between revenue-TFP and export intensity to low-income destinations and, more generally, that the correlations between export intensities and TFP are increasing in per capita income of the foreign destinations. We argue that these (and other) empirical regularities can arise from the interplay between (endogenous) cross-firm heterogeneity in product quality and cross-country heterogeneity in quality consumption. To test this conjecture, we propose a new strategy to proxy for product quality that allows to exploit some unique features of our dataset. Our results strongly suggest that firms producing higher-quality products tend to concentrate their sales in the domestic and other high-income markets.Heterogeneous Firms; Export Intensities; Quality; Technical Efficiency; Total Factor Productivity (TFP)

The Skill Bias of World Trade

We argue that, with an elasticity of substitution in consumption greater than one and higher scale economies in the skill-intensive sectors, the entire volume of world trade matters for wage inequality. This implies that trade integration, even among identical countries, is likely to increase the skill premium. This result can also explain the increase in skill premia in developing countries that have experienced drastic trade liberalizations. Further, we argue that evidence of a falling relative rpice of skill-intensive goods can be reconciled with the fast growth of world trade and that the intersectoral mobility of capital exacerbates the effect of trade on inequality. We provide new empirical evidence in support of our results and a quantitative assessment of the skill bias of world trade.Skill Premium; Scale Effect; Intra-Industry and Inter-Industry Trade

Openness, government size and the terms of trade

This paper investigates the relationship between trade openness and the size of government, both theoretically and empirically. We show that openness can increase the size of governments through two channels: (1) a terms of trade externality, whereby trade lowers the domestic cost of taxation and (2) the demand for insurance, whereby trade raises risk and public transfers. We provide a unified framework for studying and testing these two mechanisms. First, we show how their relative strength depends on a key parameter, the elasticity of substitution between domestic and foreign goods. Second, while the terms of trade externality leads to inefficiently large governments, the increase in public spending due to the demand for insurance is optimal. We show that large volumes of trade may result in welfare losses if the terms of trade externality is strong enough while small volumes of trade are always beneficial. Third, we provide new evidence on the positive association between openness and the size of government and test whether it is consistent with the terms of trade externality or the demand for insurance. Our findings suggest that the positive relationship is remarkably robust and that the terms of trade externality may be the driving force behind it, thus raising warnings that globalization may have led to inefficiently large governments.Openness, government size, terms of trade externality, elasticity of substitution between imports and exports

On the determinants of italian trade pattern.

The main feature of the italian trade pattern is the polarization of revealed comparative advantage in the traditional labor intensive sectors. This seems at odds with the fact that Italy is a high-income industrial country. In this paper, we argue that this peculiar trade structure can be explained by the joint interaction of increasing returns to scale and factor proportions. In other words, the two main theories of international trade turn out to be useful in order to account for the current structure of italian revealed comparative advantage and its evolution in the last decades.