The seminar is part of the activities of FIW, the Centre of Competence in International Economics. Regular lecture series on current issues in international economics.

Location: wiiw Wiener Institut für Internationale Wirtschaftsvergleiche, Rahlgasse 3, 1060 Wien

Monday, 24 April 2017, 3.00 - 4:30 pm

wiiw Rahlgasse 3, 1060 Vienna

Alexander-Nikolai Sandkamp

ifo Zentrum für Außenwirtschaft, Munich

Abstract

Trade protection is on the rise again and anti-dumping (AD) duties remain a common instrument in this respect, especially against China. This paper uses Chinese customs data to investigate the effects of AD duties on Chinese exporters, exploiting firm level data to address endogeneity concerns linked to trade protection. We find that the effects of AD duties differ strongly across destination markets and industries. Our empirical results show that the European and US markets react very differently to the imposition of duties, so that existing findings based on US data cannot easily be generalised to other countries. We find evidence that AD duties tend to drive some exporters out, while the remaining ones grow larger, implying that AD instruments may not be capable of protecting domestic industries in the long run. Finally, we find that AD duties lead to market entry of Chinese exporters into third countries as well as to increased exports to these countries by established exporters.

Keywords:      Anti-dumping, China, Trade, Firm Heterogeneity.

JEL Codes:    F12, F13, F14, D22.

We kindly ask you to register for the event. Participation is free of charge.

After the seminar there will be the opportunity for the speaker and the audience for further discussions, accompanied by drinks and snacks.

This seminar series is an activity in the framework of FIW ('Forschungsschwerpunkt Internationale Wirtschaft'), which is a project designed to build a centre of excellence in research on International Economics, funded by the Austrian Ministry of Science, Research and Economy (BMWFW).

The seminar programme is regularly updated. Please visit the wiiw or FIW website for the current version of the programme. Papers and presentation slides, as far as available, are posted on our webpage after the respective seminars.

Monday  20 March 2017, 3.00 - 4:30 p.m.

wiiw Rahlgasse 3, 1060 Vienna

Yvonne Wolfmayr

Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO)

The presentation is based on a paper co-authored with Elisabeth Christen (WIFO) and Michael Pfaffermayr (WIFO, University of Innsbruck).

Abstract
Focusing on services firms and services trade in Austria, this paper provides new insights into the firm level employment effects of import competition at the industry level and its interactions with firm heterogeneity in productivity and size. We use firm level data from the Austrian Social Security database (ASSD) and apply a two part model that permits an integrated treatment of firm exit and firm growth and the resulting net changes in employment within a specific service sector. The results imply that higher levels of international competition increase the probability of firm exit and decrease employment growth in surviving firms with the impact inversely related to firm productivity and firm size as predicted by theory. In addition, we find that the geographical source of import competition is important, as the impact of trade on job creation are highest when trading partners are Central and Eastern European countries. Furthermore, the results imply that employment changes due to firm exits contribute an important part to the overall trade-induced change in employment and emphasize the importance to integrate the impact of firm exits into the analysis of employment impacts of trade.

Keywords: Firm dynamics, Job creation, DHS growth rate, Import competition, Services

JEL Codes: D22, F16, J23, L25, L80

We kindly ask you to register for the event. Participation is free of charge.

After the seminar there will be the opportunity for the speaker and the audience for further discussions, accompanied by drinks and snacks.

Thursday, 16 February 2016, 4 pm

wiiw Rahlgasse 3, 1060 Vienna,

Vera Danilina

Aix-Marseille School of Economics (AMSE), France

The presentation is based on a paper co-authored with Federico Trionfetti
Aix-Marseille University (Aix-Marseille School of Economics), CNRS and EHESS, France

Astract

Green Public Procurement (GPP), or green purchasing, entered the global agenda in the early 2000s while the majority of national programmes was launched already ten years earlier. Their implementation discloses a wide range of contradictory economic consequences. Our research is focused on the GPP welfare effects in autarky and upon trade integration across eco-heterogeneous countries. We introduce the public procurement analysis approach into the heterogeneous firms setting aiming to model the life-cycle based GPP programmes that account for the environmental quality of the whole production process. The designed framework shows the collateral effect of green purchasing based on the resources redistribution across industries and average productivity changes. It also allows to study the welfare effects conditionally on the type of the GPP policy in closed and open economy settings. Our research contributes to a relatively scarce literature on environment and trade with heterogeneous rms proposing a new approach to the GPP modelling. The paper also provides a set of policy recommendations that can be of particular interest due to the development of eco-labelling and environmental standards, and corresponding GPP programmes.

Keywords:    green public procurement, green purchasing, rm heterogeneity, trade integration, voluntary environmental regulation, welfare.

JEL Codes:  F18, H57, Q58.

After the seminar there will be the opportunity for the speaker and the audience for further discussions, accompanied by drinks and snacks.

Thursday, 12 January  2017, 4 pm

wiiw Rahlgasse 3, 1060 Vienna

Bernhard Dachs (with Georg Zahradnik)

Austrian Institute of Technology, AIT

Abstract

An important aspect of the ongoing internationalisation of the world economy is the internationalisation of research, development (R&D) and innovation activities. Today, subsidiaries of multinational firms are among the top performers in many countries, and a considerable share of R&D activities in the business sectors are controlled by foreign-owned firms. The talk gives an overview of the current status of the internationalisation of R&D, discusses the drivers and impacts of the development, and presents some important new trends.

JEL Codes:  F230, O330.

After the seminar there will be the opportunity for the speaker and the audience for further discussions, accompanied by drinks and snacks.

Tuesday, 6 December 2016, 4 pm

wiiw Rahlgasse 3, 1060 Vienna, lecture hall (Eingang im Erdgeschoss)

Mariya Hake (with Christian Alexander Belabed)

OeNB

Abstract

Using data from the OeNB Euro Survey, this paper sheds light on the determinants of trust in national governments in ten Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) countries in the period 2009-2015. Using a unique data set that allows us to construct a measure of income inequality at the regional level, this study is one of the first to focus on the impact of regional income inequality on trust in public institutions for most of the countries in our sample. By applying multilevel modelling to account for the hierarchical structure of the data, our main findings indicate that while trust in national institutions increases with relative income, it overall declines with the increase of regional inequality. This result is valid across different specifications tested and despite the slight decrease of income inequality over the period as shown by the regional Gini index. In addition, our analysis shows that institutional trust in the CESEE countries tends to be pro-cyclical, while households in the EU countries in our sample react less negatively to higher income inequality.

Keywords:    Institutional trust, income inequality, CESEE countries, multilevel models.

JEL Codes:  D33, D63, E25, P36.

Presentation Hake

After the seminar there will be the opportunity for the speaker and the audience for further discussions, accompanied by drinks and snacks.

Thursday, 17 November 2016, 4 pm

wiiw, Rahlgasse 3, 1060 Vienna, lecture hall (entrance from the ground floor)

Mario Larch
(mit James E. Anderson and Yoto V. Yotov)

University of Bayreuth

Abstract

We develop a structural framework that accounts for and decomposes the relationships between trade, growth (physical capital accumulation), and foreign direct investment (FDI). As a byproduct, our theory delivers an intuitive FDI-gravity system that translates into a familiar estimating gravity equation. The FDI-gravity estimates are similar to the corresponding trade indexes, however, we also document some notable differences between them. A counterfactual experiment simulating the effects of trade liberalization between Canada and the European Union demonstrates the effectiveness and the capabilities of our framework.

Keywords:    Trade, FDI, Growth, Trade Liberalization, Capital Accumulation.

JEL Codes:  F10, F43, O40.

 Presentation Larch 17-11-2016

After the seminar there will be the opportunity for the speaker and the audience for further discussions, accompanied by drinks and snacks.

MONDAY, 24 October 2016, 4 pm

wiiw, Rahlgasse 3, 1060 Vienna, lecture hall (entrance from the ground floor)

Martin Kahanec
(with Mariola Pytlikova and Klaus Zimmermann)

CEU Budapest, IZA Bonn, CELSI Bratislava

The eastern enlargements of the European Union (EU) and the extension of the free movement of workers to the new member states' citizens unleashed significant east-west migration flows in a labour market with more than half a billion people. Although many old member states applied transitional arrangements temporarily restricting the free movement of new member states' citizens, the need for adjustment became ever more important during the Great Recession, which affected EU member states unevenly. This chapter studies whether and how east-west migration flows in an enlarged EU responded to institutional and economic factors. We first develop a simple framework of adjustment through migration of workers between labour markets affected by asymmetric economic shocks. Using a new migration dataset and treating the EU enlargement and labour market openings towards the new EU members as a natural experiment allows us to estimate the effects of the EU accession and economic opportunities on migration. Applying the difference-in-differences and triple differences empirical modelling framework, we subsequently find that east-west migration flows in the EU responded positively to the EU entry and economic opportunities in receiving labour markets. However, this potential through which migration helped to ease the imbalances across EU labour markets was hampered by transitional arrangements, which negatively affected the flows of east-west migrants. We conclude that the free movement of workers is an asset that the EU needs to nurture as a means of adjusting to structural economic asymmetries as well as to short-run shocks across EU member states.

Keywords:    EU eastern enlargement, free movement of workers, transitional arrangements, determinants of migration, Great Recession, natural experiment, difference-in-differences, migration policy

JEL Codes:  F22, J61, J68.

After the seminar there will be the opportunity for the speaker and the audience for further discussions, accompanied by drinks and snacks.

Alyssa Schneebaum
(with Miriam Rehm, Katharina Mader and Katarina Hollan)

Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU)

Abstract

This paper studies the gap in wealth holdings between male and female single households using 2010 Household Finance and Consumption Survey data for 10 European countries. The analysis employs OLS and quantile regressions and ?nds that there is no wealth gap across most of the wealth distribution, but that male households have between 30% and 76% more net wealth than female households at the very top of the distribution. Differences in labor market characteristics, in particular earnings and the ownership of business assets, explain much of the difference in the gender wealth gap between the 70^th and 90^th percentiles.

Keywords:    Gender; Wealth; Wealth Gap; Distribution

JEL Codes:  D31; J16; E21.