Trade Bloc Formation in Interwar Japan --Gravity Model Analysis-- (forthcoming in Journal of the Japanese and International Economies)

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the trading system in the interwar period concerning the Japanese Empire by means of border effect analysis in the gravity model. The results show sizeable and steadily increasing trading bloc border effects from the 1910s through the 1930s. This sizeable border effect might have resulted from many possible factors: trade diversion and creation due to increased protectionism and industrialisation in Korea and Formosa, certain political factors, and Japanese migration to Korea and Formosa, which contributed to a 52% increase of bloc border effects in mainland Japan.Trade Blocs; Gravity Model; Bloc Border Effect; Trade Diversion and Creation, Migration.

Geographical Concentration, Comparative Advantage, and Public Policy

This paper analyzes the geographical concentration and diversification of industries in the Continuum-of-Goods Trade Model in the presence of labor migration, comparative advantage, and external increasing returns to scale. In the model, higher transportation costs lead to concentration in one region, and lower transportation costs lead to diversification between the regions. For intermediate transportation costs, asymmetric diversification becomes a stable equilibrium through a reduction in the range of nontraded goods due to external increasing returns to scale and transportation costs. However, asymmetric equilibrium is an inefficient outcome: Pareto dominated by the other equilibria. To prevent this inefficient equilibrium, subsidies may be useful to sustain symmetric diversification.Concentration; Diversification; Transportation Costs; Comparative Advantage; Nontraded Goods; External IRS; Production Subsidy

Intra-industry Trade and Production Networks

This paper examines alternative determinants of intra-industry trade (IIT). Technology transfer via vertical FDI can be an alternative determinant to distance and country-specific factors in gravity equations. Vertical FDI is likely to be made in neighbouring countries in the presence of large gaps in wages and technology. These large gaps lead to foreign direct investment (FDI) and promote technology transfer from headquarters to overseas affiliates. The technology transfer through vertical FDI promotes activities in the overseas affiliates and thus increases re-imports, which can increase IIT.FDI; Technology Transfer; Wage Gap; Comparative Advantage; Firm Heterogeneity.

Trade Liberalisation and Agglomeration with Firm Heterogeneity - Forward and Backward Linkages

This paper studies the impact of trade costs reduction on geographical concentration in the presence of firm heterogeneity and overhead type of export fixed costs. Firm heterogeneity with the export fixed costs hampers full agglomeration through weakening the forward and backward linkages and fortifying the market crowding effect. Rather than catastrophic agglomeration that the standard new economic geography models have long suggested, trade liberalisation causes gradual agglomeration. Also, trade liberalisation never produces a perfect convergence in welfare for the periphery, which loses, and the core, which gains. Even free trade never equalises the welfare between core and periphery, i.e. trade liberalisation does not eliminate inequality among nations.heterogeneous firms, economic geography, spatial sorting effect, non-full agglomeration, non-catastrophic agglomeration, trade liberalisation.

Shake Hands or Shake Apart? Pre-war Global Trade and Currency Blocs--the role of the Japanese Empire

Despite world-wide bloc economies after the Depression, Japan had a tight relationship with the British Commonwealth and created tight connections with the Sterling and the Gold blocs in the late 1930s. The world-wide bloc economies did not isolate Japan.International Economics; Exchange Rates; Trade; Whatever Related

Environmental Product Standards in North-South Trade

One channel through which environment is damaged is consumption. To protect environment, various product standards are introduced all over the world. By using a new economic geography framework, this paperexplores the effects of environmental product standards on environment in a North-South trade model. We examine a situation in which North unilaterally introduces an environmental product standard. Specifically, those products that do not meet the standard are not allowed to be sold in the North market. We find that such a standard may worsen North environment but improve South environment through firm relocation.enviromental product standards, compliance costs, firm location, footloose capital model

Spatial Relocation with Heterogeneous Firms and Heterogeneous Sectors

The present paper focuses on sorting as a mechanism behind the well-established fact that there is a central region productivity premium. Using a model of heterogeneous firms that can move between regions, Baldwin and Okubo (2006) show how more productive firms sort themselves to the large core region. We extend this model by introducing different capital intensities among firms and sectors. In accordance with empirical evidence, more productive firms are assumed to be more capital intensive. As a result, our model can produce sorting to the large regions from both ends of the productivity distribution. Firms with high capital intensity and high productivity as well as firms with very low productivity and low capital intensity tend to relocate to the core. We use region and sector productivity distributions from Japanese micro data to test the predictions of the model. Several sectors show patterns consistent with two-sided sorting, and roughly an equal number of sectors seem to primarily be driven by sorting and selection. We also find supportive evidence for our model prediction that two-sided sorting occurs in sectors with a high capital intensity.Agglomeration; firm heterogeneity; productivity; spatial sorting

Home market effect, regulation costs and heterogeneous firms

This paper studies how market-specific entry sunk costs (regulation costs) affect the Home Market Effect (HME) with firm heterogeneity in marginal costs. our model is based on the Dixit-Stiglitz monopolistic competition model with firm heterogeneity plus regulation costs difference. We find that a regulation costs gap works as dispersion force by inducing a market potential gap, which reduces the HME and could cause the reverse HME or the anti-HME. The HME first rises and then fall in terms of trade openness, whereas the HME rises in terms of regulation costs gap coordination by technical barriers to trade (TBT) agreements. Firm heterogeneity dampens the dispersion force by the regulation costs difference and thus works as an agglomeration force. Firm heterogeneity causes a perfect spatial sorting, in which a large country attracts only high productivity firms, and vice versa.Home market effect, firm heterogeneity, regulation costs, technical barriers to trade.

Why Has the Border Effect in the Japanese Market Declined?: The Role of Business Networks in East Asia

This paper analyzes the causes of the decline in Japanfs border effect by estimating gravity equations for Japanfs international and interregional trade in four machinery industries (electrical, general, precision, and transportation machinery). In the estimation, we explicitly take account of firmsf networks. We find that ownership relations usually enhance trade between two regions (countries), and also find that we can explain 35% of the decline in Japanfs border effect from 1980 to 1995 in the electrical machinery industry by the increase of international networks.Gravity Model, Border Effect, Networks

Heterogeneous quality firms and trade costs

There is increasing empirical evidence that vertical product differentiation is an important determinant of international trade. However, the economic literature so far has solely focused on the case in which quality trade stems from differences between countries. No studies investigate the role of quality trade between similar economies. This paper first develops a simple theoretical trade model that includes vertical product differentiation in a heterogeneous-firm framework. The model yields three main predictions for trade between similar economies. First, exported goods are of higher quality than goods sold on the domestic market. Second, larger economies have on average higher export qualities compared with smaller economies. Third, with increasing trade costs higher quality goods are exchanged. For all three effects, strong empirical support is found using detailed export trade data of the United States and 15 European Union countries.Economic Theory&Research,Markets and Market Access,Common Carriers Industry,Free Trade,Transport and Trade Logistics