Browsing by Subject "Trade"

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Akzeptanz und Erfolg kleinräumiger Systeme der Lebensmittelversorgung im urbanen Umfeld am Beispiel Stuttgart : empirische Untersuchungen von Verbrauchern und Unternehmen
(2012) Gebhardt, Beate
The working paper analyzes the acceptance of short-chain food supply systems by consumers and companies in Stuttgart, the provincial capital of Baden-Württemberg, based on theoretical considerations and empirical studies carried out by the Chair of Agricultural Markets and Marketing at the University of Hohenheim. The key questions of the empirical studies focus on the following points: How does the city population reflect the importance of regional foods? What are the attitudes and purchase behavior of urban consumers in regard to regional food or self production and what importance can the subjects gain in the future? Of which importance is regional food to local merchants? assortment in Stuttgart and which future developments can we derive?
International trade, development traps, and the core-periphery structure of income inequality
(2019) Pinheiro, Flávio L.; Lodolo, Beatrice; Bezerra, Mayra; Hartmann, Dominik
Research on economic complexity has shown that a country’s type of exports conditions its future path of economic diversification and economic growth. Yet little emphasis has been put on the inequality associated with the types of products traded between countries and different regions of the world. Here we analyze the income inequality associated with the imports and exports of 116 countries in the period from 1970 to 2010. Our analysis shows that methods from network science and visual complexity research can help to reevaluate old theories in economics, such as coreperiphery structures in international trade or structural development traps. Our results illustrate that the core-periphery structure of global trade affects not only the income inequality between countries, but also the income inequality within countries. Moreover, they reveal the structural constraints that developing and emerging economies face in promoting inclusive growth and benchmark their productive transformations with cases of successful catching up and developed economies. The results show that countries, such as South Korea or Germany, have benefited from outsourcing high inequality products. In contrast, some middle-income countries, such as Brazil or South Africa, face structural development constraints consisting of a large average distance of their export products to low inequality products and a “gravitational force” towards high inequality products. Finally, developing economies, such as Nicaragua or Sri Lanka face a double development trap for inclusive growth, as their economies depend on both a large share of high inequality exports and imports.
Trade and FDI flows in the international economy
(2009) Spies, Julia; Belke, Ansgar
During the past decades, globalisation in all of its facets dominated many controversial debates of political leaders and common citizens and called the predominant attention of the international press and the scientific community. A major phenomenon in this context is the ongoing internationalisation of the economic activities of firms. The simultaneous interest in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and trade can be attributed to the fact that the two modes at times complement each other or conduce to alternatives in serving a foreign market. This thesis highlights some of the crucial questions that arise in this context. In Chapter 2, a new version of a theory-based gravity equation is developed to properly account for the relative price indices initially proposed by Anderson and van Wincoop (2003). The partially time-varying character of the multilateral resistance variables overcomes the bias present in earlier studies that solely rely on country or country pair fixed effects. Applying the augmented gravity equation to the process of EU integration during the 1990s, robust evidence is found that the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) have substantially increased intra-group trade, in the case of the Czech and Slovak Republic and Slovenia at the expense of the Rest of the World (ROW). Since decreasing multilateral trade resistance negatively influences a country?s bilateral imports but may be positively correlated with a bilateral FTA, earlier East-West studies, which ignore the relative price term?s time-varying character, tend to report downward biased coefficients. Indeed, the results indicate that once we correct for the omitted variable bias, the FTAs with the CEECs created between 7 and 20 percentage points more new trade compared to the scenario where only time-invariant country pair effects were included. Chapter 3 highlights the trade effects of monetary integration in Europe. The purpose is to assess the implications of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) accession of eight CEECs on their share of EMU-12 imports. Overcoming biases related to endogeneity, omitted variables and sample selection, the results indicate that the common currency has boosted intra-EMU imports by 7%. Under the assumption that the same relationship between the explanatory variables and imports will hold for EMU-CEEC trade, one can predict the future impact of the Euro. The findings of this exercise suggest that except for the least integrated countries, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, all CEECs can expect increases in the EMU-12 import share. Chapter 4 assesses the determinants of location choices of foreign multinational firms at the level of German federal states. Based on a monopolistic competition model, firms decide for a certain location if the expected profits are higher than the profits associated with all other available locations. A conditional and a nested logit model resemble the structure of the location choice process of individual investors well. By using affiliate-level data between 1997 and 2005, the results confirm that firms react positively to local demand, a common border and existing firm networks, while unit labour costs exhibit the expected negative impact. These effects vary in their relevance across manufacturing and service affiliates, and between upstream and downstream activities. This thesis confirms that the determinants and effects of the internationalisation of economic activities are multifaceted. There are several interesting directions for future research that pick up aspects studied in Chapters 1 to 3. Only very recently, researchers started to investigate the particularities of cross-border activities within the service sector and the influence of (exchange rate) uncertainty on foreign investments. These issues will give new insights into the determinants of FDI flows and the prerequisites and impacts of FTAs and currency unions that may complement, weaken or strengthen the points made in the present thesis.
Trade and political institutions in late medieval European cities : origins and long-run consequences
(2016) Wahl, Fabian; Lehmann-Hasemeyer, Sibylle
The first part of the thesis establishes a link between medieval trade, agglomeration and contemporary regional development in ten European countries. It documents a significant positive relationship between involvement in medieval trade and regional economic development today. The analysis indicates that a long-lasting effect of medieval trade on contemporary regional development is transmitted via its effect on agglomeration and industry concentration. Further empirical analyses show that medieval trade positively influenced city development both during the medieval period and in the long run; they also reveal a robust connection between medieval city growth and contemporary regional agglomeration and industry concentration. This research highlights the long-run importance of medieval trade in shaping the development of cities as well as the contemporary spatial distribution of economic activity throughout Europe. Next, a new city-level data set on political institutions in pre-modern Europe is introduced. It comprises of three variables reporting the prevalence of the different existing types of participative political institutions between 800 and 1800 AD in 104 cities in the Holy Roman Empire. According to historical studies, the three included measures (guild participation in the city council, participative election procedures and the existence of institutionalized burgher representation) represent the universe of political institutions in cities in this era. Based on this data, the next chapter of the thesis investigates the origins of guild revolts and participation in the government of late medieval central European cities. It finds that structural factors, i.e. the prosperity of proto-industry and exogenous events like the agricultural crisis were factors triggering the revolts. Medieval trade cities had a lower probability of guild participation indicating that not economic prosperity per se is decisive but rather that formerly poor groups of citizens like craftsmen profited from the economic upswing. The study also finds evidence for the existence of spatial spillovers implying that strategic considerations played a role in the spread of the revolts. Finally, I investigate the effect of the rise of participative political institutions in late medieval central European cities on city development. The results show, that the enlargement of political participation is not always conducive to city development. The participation of guilds in the city council, for example had an overall neutral or negative effect. Furthermore, the effect of guild participation is declining over time, implying that this form of PPI is prone to institutional degeneration and increased rent-seeking. Election of city government by the citizens, in contrast, shows a stable and robustly positive effect on city development. Hence, the decisive point for more political participation being conducive for economic development is that the increase in participation is accompanied by increased accountability of the politicians and a politics that is oriented toward public welfare than the special interests of particular groups.