International Trade Balance Research Articles

Fueling up: the economic implications of America's oil and gas boom

New drilling techniques for oil and natural gas are propelling an energy production renaissance in the United States. As the US economy struggles to emerge from the Great Recession, many see the boom as a possible source of economic salvation that could reduce unemployment and revitalize American manufacturing. Until now, however, there has been little objective analysis of the energy boom's economic consequences. In this major study, Trevor Houser and Shashank Mohan fill that gap. They assess the impact of the recent and projected increase in domestic energy production on US GDP, employment growth, manufacturing competitiveness, household expenditures, and international trade balance. Alongside its economic impact, the American energy revolution is raising new environmental and trade policy questions. What are the consequences for the environment and global warming of increased domestic oil and gas production? Should companies be allowed to export the energy they produce or will doing so undermine American manufacturing competitiveness? Houser and Mohan provide independent research and analysis that will help policymakers navigate these issues.

Impact of Macroeconomic Announcements on US Equity Prices: 2009-2013

We examine returns of several US equity ETFs on the days of 18 major macroeconomic announcements for the period of January 2009 – July 2013. The ARMA GARCH model with external regression terms that describe announcement events and their surprises is used. We find that ISM Manufacturing Reports, Non-Farm Payrolls, International Trade Balance, Index of Leading Indicators, Housing Starts, Jobless Claims are the most significant factors in our model. We compare performance of the buy-and-hold strategy (BH yet their differences are not statistically significant (p-value > 0.6). Mean daily returns for Model p5 are dramatically higher than that of Model #18 and have better statistical significance than that of B&H. However, compound returns for Model p5 may be lower than those of Model #18 and even lower than those of B&H due to the bull nature of the market during 2009 – 2013 and due to relatively small numbers of days when the Model p5 invested money in the market. Yet relatively short exposure to the market risk can yield a better effective Sharpe ratio for Model p5 than that of for B&H.

How trade and capital restrictions affect the probability of a balance of trade disturbance

Free market economists argue that national authorities avoid restrictions on the free movement of goods, services and financial capital between countries. Yet, countries continually choose to restrict the flow of capital both into and out of the country. Why is this done? Is it done to protect the domestic banking system, to control the domestic money supply, to manage the exchange rate, to provide stability for internal markets or to avoid wide swings in the availability of capital? Are these controls effective in precluding wide swings in a country's international trade balance? This article uses panel data in a logit model to analyse policy choice with respect to an international trade and/or investment regime. The goal is to identify choices effective in reducing the likelihood of a severe Balance of Trade Disturbance (BTD) and determine if the appropriate choice is related to per capita income (pci).

The connection of income situation of farms and the reproduction processes in Poland in the view of the EU integration

The aim of the paper is to show the influence of the improving farms' income situation in Poland after the UE accession with their reproductive possibilities. To achieve this target it was defined whether the increasing agricultural income parity was a result of a changing market situation ("price scissors"), CAP subsidies or investment-accumulative processes. Also the connection of the EU financial means with the balance of agri-food international trade was analysed.

The international trade prospective of agriculture sector in South African

The objective of this paper is to analyse the international trade performance of the South African agricultural industry in aggregate and by product group categories. A useful tool in this regard is the Gini and intra-industrial trade coefficient (IIT), which is used to examine the international trade balance of South Africa. Moreover, Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) is also used to identify factors that may be necessary to achieve high IIT. The IIT coefficient, after 1994, achieved more than 85 percent, which is a record level even for industrialised countries. This high IIT performance reveals trade liberalisation between the Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU) and the European Union (EU), opening South Africa’s market to the world. It also reveals that South Africa is able to increase its specialisation and flexibility to gain market access, and has shown a greater ability to compete in a changing trade environment. The results of the econometric analysis of IIT determinants give a greater magnitude to the coefficients export to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and export -to -import ratios. These results imply that if South Africa’s industries take measures to increase trade liberalisation, diversity, and the level of industrial specialisation, the IIT level would be higher, and significant economic gain might be achieved by minimising costs. Key words: Gini and intra-industrial trade coefficient, the international trade performance.

Methane emissions by Chinese economy: Inventory and embodiment analysis

Concrete inventories for methane emissions and associated embodied emissions in production, consumption, and international trade are presented in this paper for the mainland Chinese economy in 2007 with most recent availability of relevant environmental resources statistics and the input–output table. The total CH 4 emission by Chinese economy 2007 estimated as 39,592.70 Gg is equivalent to three quarters of China's CO 2 emission from fuel combustion by the global thermodynamic potentials, and even by the commonly referred lower IPCC global warming potentials is equivalent to one sixth of China's CO 2 emission from fuel combustion and greater than the CO 2 emissions from fuel combustion of many economically developed countries such as UK, Canada, and Germany. Agricultural activities and coal mining are the dominant direct emission sources, and the sector of Construction holds the top embodied emissions in both production and consumption. The emission embodied in gross capital formation is more than those in other components of final demand characterized by extensive investment and limited consumption. China is a net exporter of embodied CH 4 emissions with the emission embodied in exports of 14,021.80 Gg, in magnitude up to 35.42% of the total direct emission. China's exports of textile products, industrial raw materials, and primary machinery and equipment products have a significant impact on its net embodied emissions of international trade balance. Corresponding policy measures such as agricultural carbon-reduction strategies, coalbed methane recovery, export-oriented and low value added industry adjustment, and low carbon energy polices to methane emission mitigation are addressed.

Carbon emissions and resources use by Chinese economy 2007: A 135-sector inventory and input–output embodiment

A 135-sector inventory and embodiment analysis for carbon emissions and resources use by Chinese economy 2007 is presented in this paper by an ecological input–output modeling based on the physical entry scheme. Included emissions and resources belong to six categories as: (1) greenhouse gas (GHG) in terms of CO 2, CH 4, and N 2O; (2) energy in terms of coal, crude oil, natural gas, hydropower, nuclear power, and firewood; (3) water in terms of freshwater; (4) exergy in terms of coal, crude oil, natural gas, grain, bean, tuber, cotton, peanut, rapeseed, sesame, jute, sugarcane, sugar beet, tobacco, silkworm feed, tea, fruits, vegetables, wood, bamboo, pulp, meat, egg, milk, wool, aquatic products, iron ore, copper ore, bauxite, lead ore, zinc ore, pyrite, phosphorite, gypsum, cement, nuclear fuel, and hydropower; (5) and (6) solar and cosmic emergies in terms of sunlight, wind power, deep earth heat, chemical power of rain, geopotential power of rain, chemical power of stream, geopotential power of stream, wave power, geothermal power, tide power, topsoil loss, coal, crude oil, natural gas, ferrous metal ore, non-ferrous metal ore, non-metal ore, cement, and nuclear fuel. Accounted based on the embodied intensities are carbon emissions and resources use embodied in the final use as rural consumption, urban consumption, government consumption, gross fixed capital formation, change in inventories, and export, as well as in the international trade balance. The resulted database is basic to environmental account of carbon emissions and resources use at various levels.

Food Aid's Intended and Unintended Consequences

This paper surveys the existing empirical evidence on the unintended consequences of food aid. Micro-level evidence is presented on the impacts of food aid deliveries on household labour supply, production incentives, consumption patterns and natural resource use. At the meso-level, evidence on the impact of food aid on market development, market prices, informal insurance arrangements, and the behavior of implementing agencies is surveyed. Macro level evidence on the impact of food aid on balance of payments, economic growth, international trade, exchange rates and other factors is reviewed. Although food aid can have negative unintended consequences, the empirical evidence is thin and often contradictory. The available evidence suggests that harmful effects are most likely to occur when food aid arrives or is purchased at the wrong time, when food aid distribution is not well targeted to the most food insecure households, and when the local market is relatively poorly integrated with broader national, regional and global markets. These results imply the need for caution in basing food aid programming decisions on a relatively weak body of empirical evidence.

A forecasting model of the Kenyan economy

A demand-oriented macroeconometric model of the Kenyan economy is developed and estimated in line with the cointegration technique. The estimated structure of the model is used to perform policy simulation experiments to determine the sensitivity of key macroeconomic variables to changes in exchange rate, net government current expenditure and nominal interest rate. The results of policy simulation experiments reveal that the exchange rate and fiscal policies are relatively more effective than the monetary policy, i.e. changing the nominal interest rate, in influencing the level of economic activity. The results point to the possibility of devaluation improving the international trade balance.

Replacing PIS and Cofins - and Why Not the CPMF? - By a Non-Cumulative Contribution

Cascading taxes are responsible in Brazil for almost 25% of total revenue raised by the three levels of government. This is harmful to the country's economic performance and to her international trade balance. In this paper, the sectoral burdens of Brazilian cascading social contributions, as well as their impacts on exports and imports, are estimated, and their harmful effects on the economy are discussed. Substitution of a value added contribution for the cascading ones is proposed. It is suggested that, in view of urgency and notwithstanding some sacrifice of its quality, the new tax be created simply by means of an ordinary law, without amending the Constitution. Most desirable features of the tax that can be created without changing the terms of the Brazilian Constitution are discussed. The uniform rate necessary to keep tax revenue constant and changes in sectoral tax payments that would arise are estimated.

Eastern Europe's Transition to a Market Economy

A risk matrix is developed to evaluate Eastern European countries for business opportunities. It includes the economic and political risk profiles of the Eastem European countries of the former Eastern bloc buffer zone, i.e., Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the countries of the former Yugoslavia. The risk matrix is based on the economic and political environment and performance of these countries in the recent years. The four economic risk factors include (i) international trade balance, (ii) overall balance, (iii) government debt and gross domestic product, and (iv) price stability, inflation and exchange rates. The political risk factors include (i) political history under communist regime, (ii) transition process and present political structure, and (iii) public/international support and national unity. Overall risk ratings based on combining the economic and political risk factors suggest that the Czech and Slovak Republics are the least risky while Alb...

The Internationalization of Australian Higher Education

Australia’s involvement in international education has undergone several significant policy shifts since World War II. From 1950 onwards, Australia provided significant number of foreign aid‐related scholarships to selected “sponsored” students from needy “developing countries” as part of the Colombo Plan. In 1974, the federal Labor government simultaneously “took over” the total funding bill for higher education (relieving the states of their roughly 50 percent share) and abolished tuition fees. This free tuition also extended to foreign overseas students. The number of foreign students grew rapidly, and the federal higher education budget expanded in the 1970s. A decision was taken in 1979 to introduce a tuition fee for private (i.e., non-governmentsponsored) overseas students—the Overseas Student Charge—constituting one-third of the actual costs. The roughly 10,000 foreign students in this category—mostly from Asia—were viewed as being “subsidized” by the foreign aid budget. Despite some outrage from Australian academics, foreign students and their governments at this “comodification of education,” most universities saw little option but to engage in the pursuit of revenue through competitive marketing and student recruitment programs in Asia. As Australia’s international trade balance seriously deteriorated in the early 1980s, the federal government’s attitude hardened and like the United Kingdom, it introduced a full fee-paying overseas student policy—Australia had effectively shifted from a traditional “aid” to a “trade” perspective in relation to foreign students. The federal minister for education encouraged “cash-strapped” universities to charge a “profit margin” on foreign student tuition to generate revenue. Despite some outrage from Australian academics, foreign students and their governments at this “comodification of education,” most universities saw little option but to engage in the pursuit of revenue through competitive marketing and student recruitment programs in Asia. The result has been spectacular growth in international student enrollments.

The economics of arms transfers: The Saudi AWACS sale and the Israeli LAVI fighter

Abstract The Reagan Administration made a dramatic change in U.S. arms transfer policy early in 1981 which resulted in the viewpoint that conventional arms transfers would become an essential element of U. S. global defense posture and a key element of U.S. foreign policy. The Saudi AWACS sale in 1981 and the formal go‐ahead for the Israeli LAVI fighter in early 1982 were the immediate beneficiaries of this arms transfer policy change. Both of these Middle East arms transfer issues had major economic implications for the U.S. economy, including the maintenance of the U.S. defense industrial base, international trade balance issues, and technology transfer.

Country Risk, International Lending, and Exchange Rate Determination

The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the importance of credit risk in a model that integrates the determination of international lending and exchange rates. The literature on exchange rate determination contains a number of models that integrate an equilibrium condition on stocks of assets or debts with an equilibrium condition on goods flows or the international trade balance; together, these conditions anchor the (long-run) level of the real exchange rate, defined either as a relative price of domestic and foreign goods or relative price of nontradable and tradable goods. Models of this type include DOrnbusch, Calvo and Rodriguez, Dornbusch and Fischer, and Mussa. A restrictive feature of these models, however, is the small-country assumption that concentrates attention on the portfolio-adjustment behavior of domestic residents, who are assumed able to borrow or lend freely at a fixed foreign interest rate. A second limitation of these models is the lack of attention to credit risk, and in many cases to exchange risk as well. Needless to say, such abstractions don't square well with a world in which debt rescheduling has become commonplace and few countries can be found whose liabilities are either small or riskless from the perspective of their international creditors.

The long term implications and constraints of alternate energy policies

The complexity of the current energy situation is such that conventional analysis does not provide sufficient foundation upon which to base energy-policy decisions. We have used an overview perspective in analyzing how a diverse range of phenomena, such as population, price, inflation, transportation, agriculture, international trade and city design, are linked to energy policy. A principle tool used in the study is the hierarchical simulation model SPECULATER. Contrary to the “conventional wisdom”, present U.S. energy prices are exceedingly low, whether the standard of comparison is the historical level of U.S. energy prices or current energy prices in other countries, which are 3 to 115 times more expensive after correcting for ability to pay. We do not suggest that higher energy prices are not inflationary, but rather that lower energy prices are also inflationary. Widening the analytical scope reveals that the “benefits” of low energy prices are more illusionary than real. What may appear to be an immediate benefit of a particular policy often turns out to be a subsequent disaster. Unless policies are aimed at promoting long-term stability instead of short-term benefit, the difficult decisions we are facing today will seem trivial compared to the agonizing decisions we stand to face in the future. Simulations using SPECULATER indicate some of the long-term implications of current energy policy. For example, a policy in which gasoline prices decline slightly until 1980 and then increase only with inflation leads to a year 2000 wheat price that is 21% higher than that produced by a policy which advocates an increase in the price of gasoline to $1.00 by 2000. Both policies would still require large imports of oil and, consequently, would push U.S. agricultural system to a point where necessary production levels could only be met by massive increases in capital (both human and monetary), energy and water. Alternatively, an energy policy that would increase gasoline prices to a level similar to that in West Germany (about three times current U.S. prices, after correcting for ability to pay) would result in lower wheat prices, since consumption would be decreased, with concomitant decreases in oil imports and wheat exports. Failure of policy-makers to support a strong energy policy (culminating in decreased consumption and ultimately general conservation) will result in a diversity of other problems becoming more serious. Capital promises to be a critical factor in the future, as do water, health care service, and the U.S. international trade balance. In short, “cheap” energy is not cheap; energy will be paid for a true price in some roundabout fashion, either in the supermarket, through increased taxes, loss of jobs, lack of health care services, etc.

International Trade Statistics, 1937 and Balance of Payments, 1937

International Trade Statistics, 1937 and Balance of Payments, 1937 42. International Trade Statistics, 1937. [1938. IIA. 19.] 1938. (Geneva : League of Nations; London : Allen & Unwin. 8vo. 450 pp. 12s. 6d.)43. Balance of Payments, 1937. [1938. IIA. 18.] 1938. (Geneva: League of Nations; London: Allen & Unwin. 8vo. 212 pp. 6s.) Barnard Ellinger Barnard Ellinger Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 18, Issue 3, May-June 1939, Pages 412–413, https://doi.org/10.2307/3019707 Published: 01 May 1939

The International Trade Balance in Theory and Practice.

The International Trade Balance in Theory and Practice.

The International Trade Balance in Theory and Practice.

The International Trade Balance in Theory and Practice.