Measuring Regulatory Restrictions in Logistics Services

This study measures the extent of restrictions on trade in logistics services in the ASEAN+6 economies by constructing a logistics regulatory restrictiveness index for each economy that quantifies the extent of government regulations faced by logistics service providers. This is the first study of its kind to construct a regulatory index of the entire logistics sector, which includes the main modes of international transport and customs restrictions. The indices show that large differences exist in the logistics regulatory environment of ASEAN+6 economies. Many of these economies are open to trade in logistics services, while others are relatively restrictive. Malaysia, China, Indonesia, Lao PDR, the Philippines and Vietnam are the most restrictive economies of logistics services in this region. Relatively, Singapore and Australia are the most open economies for trade in logistics services, along with Japan and New Zealand. Preliminary investigations find evidence of negative relationships between logistics regulatory restrictiveness and logistics sector performance, as measured by the World Bank's Logistics Performance Index and its sub-components. These findings support that notion that a less restricted trade environment results in better performance for the logistics sector.Logistics, Transport, Government Regulation, Trade, East Asia

The Labor Content of Exports Database

This paper develops a novel methodology to measure the quantity of jobs and value of wages embodied in exports for a large number of countries and sectors for intermittent years between 1995 and 2011. The resulting Labor Content of Exports database allows the examination of the direct contribution of labor to exports as well as the indirect contribution via other sectors of the economy for skilled and unskilled labor. The analysis of the new data sets documents several new findings. First, the global share of labor value added in exports has been declining globally since 1995, but it has increased in low-income countries. Second, in line with the standard Hecksher-Ohlin trade model, the composition of labor directly contained in exports is skewed toward skilled labor in high-income countries relative to developing countries. However, that is not the case for the indirect labor content of exports. Third, manufacturing exports are a key source of labor demand in other sectors, especially in middle- and low-income countries. And the majority of the indirect demand for labor spurred by exports is in services sectors, whose workers are the largest beneficiaries of exporting activities globally. Fourth, differences in the labor value added in exports share across developing countries appears to be driven more by differences in the composition of exports rather than in sector labor intensities. Finally, average wages typically increase rapidly enough with the process of economic development to more than compensate the loss in jobs per unit of exports. The paper also includes the necessary information to build the Labor Content of Exports database from the original raw data, including stata do-files and matlab files, as well as descriptions of the variables in the data set

Essays on the transmission of economic shocks.

This thesis explores the transmission of economic shocks. Although the thesis is structured as four stand-alone chapters, the common theme throughout is identifying the impact of economic shocks: either idiosyncratic shocks at the household-level, macroeconomic shocks emanating from foreign countries and transmitted through global markets, or countries’ own macroeconomic policy changes (for example, structural reforms or trade reforms). Each chapter applies a different empirical methodology, including structural estimation, reduced form instrumental variables estimation, and growth accounting. Finally, each chapter utilizes a different dataset and country sample selection. While one chapter uses a micro dataset from household-level surveys, others use cross-country datasets at the aggregate country level. Both developed and developing countries are considered in the analyses. The thesis begins by exploring the relationship between idiosyncratic income changes and consumption changes of Australian households over the period 2001-2009. A major contribution to the literature is the use of the Household Income and Labor Dynamics of Australia dataset that includes panels on both consumption and income data. For the entire sample of Australian households, nearly full consumption smoothing exists against transitory shocks. Although less consumption smoothing exists against permanent shocks, Australian households still achieve a high degree of consumption smoothing against highly persistent shocks, particularly when compared to households in the United States. Durable purchases, female labor supply, and taxes and transfers are all found to act as consumption-smoothing mechanisms. The thesis then explores the impact of structural reforms on a comprehensive list of macro-level labor-market outcomes, including the unemployment rate, employment levels, average wage index, and labor force participation rates. After documenting the average trends across countries in the labor-market outcomes up to ten years on either side of each country’s reform year, fixed-effects ordinary least squares as well as instrumental variables regressions are performed to account for likely endogeneity of structural reforms to labor-market outcomes. Overall the results suggest that structural reforms lead to positive outcomes for labor, particularly for informal workers. Redistributive effects in favor of workers, along the lines of the Stolper-Samuelson effect, may be at work. The thesis then explores the impact of trade liberalization on macroeconomic estimates of productivity using Brazil as a case study. Trade and economic reforms can affect the price of capital goods relative to other tradable and especially non-tradable goods. If the price of capital investments rises more than the price of all goods and services in the economy, mismeasurement of the price of capital caused by the divergence in these relative prices would result in an overestimated capital stock and underestimated TFP. This chapter overcomes this bias by constructing a capital price index using international trade data on capital goods’ unit values then adjusts the index to reflect domestic Brazilian prices. A significant recovery between 1992 and 2006 is observed, highlighting the important role of the price deflator in growth accounting. The final chapter of this thesis proposes a methodology to measure the vulnerability of a country through exports to fluctuations in the economic activity of foreign markets. Export vulnerability depends first on the overall level of export exposure, measured as the share of exports to a foreign market in gross domestic product, and second on the sensitivity of exports to fluctuations in foreign gross domestic product. This sensitivity is captured by estimating origin-destination specific elasticities of exports with respect to changes in foreign gross domestic product using a gravity model of trade. Although the results suggest differences in elasticity estimates across regions as well as product categories, the principal source of international heterogeneity in export vulnerability results from differences in export exposure to global markets.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Economics, 201

Trade Policy Barriers: An Obstacle to Export Diversification in Eurasia

Despite trade liberalization efforts made by Eurasian countries, the export structure of the region shows significant levels of concentration across export destinations. To shed light on this observation, this research analyzes trade policy barriers in Eurasia, East Asia and the Pacific, and the European Union. Using the most recent data from sources including the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, and the World Bank – including the Overall Trade Restrictiveness Indices, the Services Trade Restrictions Database, and the Temporary Trade Barriers Database – the role of tariffs, non-tariff measures, temporary trade barriers, trade agreements, and trade barriers in services are explored to explain the lack of diversification by destination. Several conclusions can be drawn from the analysis. First, China, Korea, and Japan, as well as the European Union, impose high levels of protection on products of animal origin, which may explain the lack of Eurasian export diversification toward the East Asia and the Pacific and the European Union regions. It also highlights the potential benefits of diversifying the structure of production in Eurasia toward more sophisticated and technologically intensive goods. Second, the East Asia and the Pacific region (especially China) appears to be more protectionist than the European Union, suggesting a greater challenge for Eurasian countries in diversifying exports to the destination. And third, few or no regional trade agreements exist between Eurasian countries and countries in the European Union or East Asia and the Pacific

Valuing Services in Trade :A Toolkit for Competitiveness Diagnostics: World Bank Publications, The World Bank

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