Nederlandse export: bloemen en groenten

In welke economische activiteit is Nederland relatief sterk? Om dit te meten is het gebruikelijk om de export van Nederlandse producten of bedrijfstakken te vergelijken met de export van deze producten van andere landen. Daarbij is het mogelijk om de wereld als geheel als referentiekader te nemen, maar daaraan kleeft een aantal bezwaren. Zo kunnen landen met een totaal verschillend ontwikkelingsniveau worden vergeleken (bijvoorbeeld Nederland en Kenia). Bovendien kunnen tal van handelsrestricties een storende invloed hebben op de waargenomen exportstromen (zowel Nederland als Kenia exporteren bijvoorbeeld bloemen naar Duitsland; toegang tot de Duitse markt is voor Nederland als lid van de Europese Unie echter veel makkelijker)

Empirical relevance of the Hillman condition for revealed comparative advantage: 10 stylized facts

The theoretically necessary and sufficient condition for the correspondence between ‘revealed’comparative advantage and pre-trade relative prices derived by Hillman (1980) is analyzed empricially for virtually all countries of the world over an extended period of time. This yields 10 stylized facts, including that (i) violations of the Hillman condition are small as a share of the number of observations, but quite substantial as a share of the value of world exports, (ii) violations occur relatively frequent in the period 1970 – 1984 while they hardly ever occur in the period 1985 – 1997, and (iii) violations occur foremost in primary product and natural-resource intensive sectors, for sectors in countries in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. The condition appears also to be useful for identifying erroneous trade flow classifications

Cross-Border Mergers & Acquisitions: A Piece of The Natural Resource Curse Puzzle

We combine the resource curse literature with the literature on cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) to investigate two hypotheses, namely (i) countries with a comparative advantage in natural resources attract more M&As in natural resource intensive sectors and (ii) countries with a high natural resource dependency attract fewer M&As in other sectors. Using the Thomson dataset we test these hypotheses for a sample of 49 African and Latin American countries in the period 1988 - 2007. Both hypotheses were confirmed by our findings. Thus, resource dependency has a “crowding out” effect on M&As in sectors not intensive in natural resources, and a comparative advantage in natural resources has a “crowding in” effect on M&As in sectors intensive in natural resources

Dynamics of Chinese Comparative Advantage

We analyze the dynamics of Chinese comparative advantage as measured by export shares and the Balassa index using 3-digit and 4-digit sectors for the period 1970 – 1997. We use novel tools to identify periods of rapid structural change and the persistence of comparative advantage, such as Galtonian regressions, probability-probability (p-p) plots, and the Harmonic Mass index, to supplement the usual descriptive statistical methods and mobility indicators associated with Markov transition matrices

Comparing distributions: the Harmonic Mass index

The information contained in PP-plots is transformed into a single number. The resulting Harmonic Mass (HM) index is distribution free and its sample counterpart is shown to be consistent. For a wide class of CDFs the exact analytical expression of the distribution of the sample HM index is derived, assuming the two underlying samples to be drawn from the same distribution. The robustness of the concomitant test statistic is assessed, and four different methods are discussed for applying the HM test in case of asymmetric samples

The Pollution Effects of Mergers and Acquisitions: Asymmetry, Disaggregation, and Multilateralism

This paper studies the impact of cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As) on Carbon Dioxide emissions. Carbon Dioxide is the main anthropogenic greenhouse gas. A global problem that requires a multilateral solution. To take this into account we introduce an institutional variable, which captures the degree of international commitment to decrease and control the degradation of the environment. We test three hypotheses and find: (i) Asymmetry: the development level of the target country determines the direction of the effect of M&As on CO2 emissions; (ii) Sector-specific impact: pollution intensive sectors have an impact on CO2 emissions, whereas other sectors do not; (iii) Multilateralism: multilateral agreements are important to reduce CO2 emissions

Empirical Relevance of the Hillman Condition and Comparative Advantage

We analyze the empirical violation of the Hillman condition, a necessary and sufficient condition for the correspondence between comparative advantage and pre-trade relative prices. Our comprehensive data set allows us to investigate the Hillman condition for virtually all countries of the world, over an extended period of time, for many sectors, and for different levels of aggregation. Violations of the Hillman condition are small as a share of the number of observations, but can be substantial as a share of the value of world exports. Measured either way, violations occurred much more frequently in the 1970s and early 1980s, a difference mostly caused by the two oil crises. As the condition is useful for identifying various anomalies, we argue that it should be included as a standard diagnostic test for empirical studies into comparative advantage