贸易结构与经济增长【外文翻译】

外文翻译

原文

Trade Structure and Economic Growth

Material Source: Spinger Link Author:Raja Kali,

Fabio Méndez,Javier Reyes

There is a significant amount of debate regarding the relationship between trade(ortrade openness)and economic growth.Theoretically, the effects of trade on growth have been shown to be positive or negative under different circumstances (See,for example,Grossman and Helpman(1991),Matsuyama(1992),Walde and Wood(2005))

Empirically,whether the evidence presented is in favor or against trade is likely to depend on the variables used to measure the degree of openness in an economy,the sample data used,or the econometric technique employed (Rodriguez and Rodrick (2000),Yannikkaya(2003)).

Nonetheless,over the last 30 years most countries in the world have gradually opened their economies to international trade.During that time,policy markers all over the world have made a concerted effort to increase the number of trading partners and to decrease the dependence of trade on a single buyer or seller.Just in the last 10 years over 130 regional trade agreements have been reported to the World Trade Organization(and more are in the works)compared to only 124 from 1948-1994.Key players like the U.S.A.and the E.U.have also adopted a more aggressive pace in their bilateral trade negotiations.

In fact,the changes experienced over the last decades of globalization are more pronounced in terms of the structure of trade than in the volume of trade itself.As shown in Table 1,while the share of total trade in GDP for the average economy went from 58.3%in 1970 to 88.5%in 2003,the average number of trading partners more than doubled as it went from 46.4 to 93.9 in that same period.With notable exceptions,most countries are less reliant on one trading partner(or group of partners)than they were 30 years ago.

Moreover,there are reasons to believe that such characteristics regarding the structure of trade have significant implications for economic growth that operate independently from the level of trade or openness.Given the level of trade,having more trading partners leads to greater exposure,greater exchange of ideas and greater competition.All of which stimulate growth.At the same time,a greater dispersion of trade among partners can serve as a cushion against external economic shocks,and,in the case of less developed countries,a smaller dispersion of trade may provide a cost-efficient rout to newer technologies and economies of scale.

In terms of policy, understanding the channels through which these characteristics affect growth is also important.If the elements that characterize the structure of trade affect both the levels of trade and the rate of economic growth,then the results of past empirical studies(that fail to control for the structure of trade)may suffer from important estimation biases and could be sending misguided incentives to policy makers.

Furthermore, as explained in the following sections,the disparity in existing conditions in poor and rich economies may call for very different policies regarding the structure of trade.Understanding these differences will yield better policy prescriptions.

Our results suggest that the structure of trade, independently from the level of trade itself,has an important effect on the rate of economic growth.The number of trading partners is found to be positively correlated with growth across all countries;this effect is found to be greater for rich countries.In turn,trade dispersion is found to be negatively correlated with growth for all countries in general and poor countries in specific.All results presented are robust to changes in the econometric specification used, the number of explanatory variables included, and corrections for heteroskedasticity.

Even though the structure of trade is a complex concept that might be relevant in more than one sense,we regard our efforts as a first step in this direction. Empirical measuresof trade characteristics or trade structure are scarce. However,as this paper demonstrates, this could lead to new avenues of research within the trade-growth Literature.

Formally, the effects of trade on growth can be studied by extending the analytical framework of the endogenous growth models that follow the lines of Romer (1987,1990) and Grossman and Helpmann (1991).

As shown by Rivera-Batiz and Romer(1991),introducing trade in this type of