Does the GATT/WTO promote trade? After all, Rose was right

This paper re-examines the efect of the GATT/WTO on trade using recent econometric developments that allow us estimating structural gravity equations with the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood (PPML) estimator on a large dataset that requires computing high-dimensional fxed efects. By doing so, we overcome computational limitations that are present in previous studies. In line with Rose's (Am Econ Rev 94:98-114, 2004) seminal work, we fnd that, unlike regional trade agreements and currency unions, the GATT/WTO accession has not generated positive trade efects. This result is robust to the use of alternative measures of trade fows, across periods and country groups, to changes in the periodicity of the data, when taking into account the GATT/WTO accession dynamics, to controlling for the participation of only one country of the dyad in GATT/WTO, to the consideration of non-member participants, and to the use of alternative datasets. Notwithstanding, we also find that PPML results are sensitive to the defnition of the dependent variable

EMU and Trade : A PPML re-assessment with intra-national trade flows

Since Rose's (2000) path-breaking study, a lot of studies have been carried out on the effect of currency unions on trade. Both Rose's striking finding that sharing a currency union more than triples trade between countries and the creation of the euro have propelled an intense debate on this issue and, in particular, about the effect of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) on trade. More than 50 papers have examined the effect of EMU on bilateral trade flows given that it is, by far, the most important monetary union. However, so far the results vary greatly across studies and even the most recent articles provide mixed results. Whereas Glick and Rose (2016) and Larch, Wanner, and Yotov (2018) find a positive EMU effect on trade, Mika and Zymek (2018) and Larch, Wanner, Yotov, and Zylkin (2019) provide no evidence of a positive effect on trade. Therefore, the debate is still ongoing

Regional headquarters and foreign direct investment

Headquarters (HQs) provide a wide range of services, playing a fundamental role in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). We use the structural gravity equation to investigate the effect of regional HQs on three dimensions of FDI (number of foreign projects, capital investment, and jobs) at the country-pair-sector level. Furthermore, we explore two underlying mechanisms that help explain this relationship: financial constraints and informational costs and uncertainty. We find a positive effect of regional HQs on FDI, as well as intercountry and intersector spillovers. Our results are robust, accounting for HQ intensity, domestic investment, and endogeneity tests

Corruption and International Trade: A Re-assessment with Intra-National Flows

This study re-examines the impact of corruption on international trade accounting for both inter- and intra-national flows in line with the latest advances in the gravity equation literature. Using a wide sample of countries for the period 1995–2017, our results show that the non-inclusion of internal trade flows drastically biases the estimations. Additionally, we find that the negative impact of corruption on trade is reduced, ceteris paribus, in poorer countries. We also find non-linearities, more corrupt countries present a more harmful impact of corruption on trade. Moreover, we perform a general equilibrium analysis to investigate the impact of a given reduction in perceived corruption on a selected group of countries’ economic growth and prices. We find that these effects are far from being negligible, especially when there is a “synchronized” reduction in corruption in most corrupt countries

The impact of process innovations on firm's productivity growth: the case of Spain

The main aim of this paper is to investigate about the effect that a measure of the process innovation performance of a firm has on its labour productivity growth. This analysis is mainly a consequence of two considerations. The first one results from a clear differentiation of the role that product and process innovations have on a firm's performance. The second one is to assume that the knowledge capital of a firm is mainly composed by its successful research. The study demonstrates that process innovation has a positive and significant effect on firm's productivity growth. Moreover, this result is robust under a wide range of alternative specifications and, in any case, the variable behaves much better than R&D intensity. Following previous research, the detected quadratic relationship between vertical product differentiation and process innovation performance leads to the existence of some firms for which there exist a trade–off between quality and productivity.