Collaborative Research: Fixed Costs of Exporting, Trade Relationships and Real Exchange Rates

有些国家的贸易关系比其他国家更密切。例如，2003年，美国与加拿大和墨西哥的商品贸易--进口加出口--比它与欧盟15个成员国的总和还要多57%。尽管欧盟15国的国内生产总值总和是加拿大加墨西哥的6倍多。数据显示，美国的商业周期与加拿大和墨西哥的商业周期的协调程度远远高于与欧盟的商业周期的协调程度。数据还显示，美国-加拿大真实的汇率和美元-墨西哥真实的汇率与经济基本面波动的相关性大于美国的波动。欧盟双边真实的汇率。该提案制定了一项开发模型的计划，以分析宏观总量的跨国特征如何与国家之间的贸易量相关。拟议的研究将调查在国际商业周期和真实的汇率波动模型中建立贸易关系的成本模型的影响。具体而言，该项目将模拟公司向某一国家出口特定商品的固定成本，例如在该国建立销售网络。该项目计划使用开发的模型来分析国际商业周期、真实的汇率波动以及国际贸易和投资政策对总生产率的影响。20世纪90年代初建立的分析北美自由贸易协定（NAFTA）经济影响的模型在预测该协定后实际发生的贸易模式变化方面做得很差。该研究将有助于我们开发更好的模型来分析贸易和外国投资自由化的影响。这些模型还旨在帮助我们理解为什么国际资本流动突然逆转所产生的金融危机会导致严重的经济危机。在1994-1995年的墨西哥和2001-2002年的阿根廷，突然停止都造成了严重的危机和生产率的大幅下降。更广泛的影响：对这一建议中提出的各种问题提供令人满意的答案，对于政策分析和提高国内外政治辩论的水平至关重要。目前，美国正在与拉丁美洲的一些国家谈判自由贸易协定。为了建立更好的模型来分析这些协议的潜在影响，经济学家需要了解为什么为分析NAFTA而建立的模型表现如此糟糕。关于贸易集团内部和贸易集团之间汇率波动的工作将有助于建立模型，分析自由化后宏观经济相互依存性的增加。它还将提供衡量北美自由贸易协定国家与欧洲联盟之间未来贸易增加的潜在收益的措施。这项工作提供了一个潜在的解释，为什么最近美元对欧元的贬值并没有导致美国和欧洲之间的贸易流量发生重大变化。金融危机及贸易和外国投资政策建模工作将提供衡量贸易和外国投资政策自由化的潜在成本和效益的措施，特别是在贸易和外国投资政策自由化的发展中国家。经济学家必须更好地了解墨西哥和阿根廷在过去十年中发生的事件，这样才能使正在重新考虑这种自由化政策的决策者、新闻界人士和公众放心。

Some sets of countries have closer trade relationships than others. In 2003 the United States, for example, had more than 57 percent more merchandise trade - imports plus exports - with Canada and Mexico than it did with all of the 15 members of the European Union combined. This was in spite of the fact that the combined GDP of the 15 EU countries was more than 6 times larger than that of Canada plus Mexico. The data show that business cycles in the United States are far more coordinated with business cycles in Canada and Mexico than they are with the business cycles in the European Union. The data also show that fluctuations in the U.S.- Canada real exchange rate and the U.S.-Mexico real exchange rate are more correlated with fluctuations in economic fundamentals than are fluctuations in U.S.-EU bilateral real exchange rates. This proposal lays out a plan for developing models to analyze how the cross-country characteristics of macro aggregates relate to the amount of trade between countries. The proposed research would investigate the implications of modeling the costs of setting up trade relationships in models of international business cycles and real exchange rate fluctuations. Specifically, this project would model firms as facing fixed costs of exporting specific goods to a specific country, for example, in setting up a distribution network in that country. This project plans to use the models developed for analyzing international business cycles, real exchange rate fluctuations and the effects of international trade and investment policy on aggregate productivity. Models constructed in the early 1990s to analyze the economic impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) did a poor job of predicting the changes in trade patterns that actually occurred following this agreement. The proposed research would help us to develop better models for analyzing the impact of trade and foreign investment liberalization. The models are also intended to help us understand why financial crises produced by a sudden reversal of international capital flows result in severe economic crises. In both Mexico in 1994-1995 and in Argentina in 2001-2002, sudden stops produced severe crises and large drops in productivity. Broader Impact: Providing satisfactory answers to the sorts of questions posed in this proposal is essential for both policy analysis and for raising the level of political debate here and abroad. Currently, the United States is negotiating free trade agreements with a number of countries in Latin America. To build better models to analyze the potential impact of such agreements, economists need to understand why the models built to analyze NAFTA did so poorly. The work on exchange rate fluctuations within and across trade blocs will help produce models to analyze the increased macroeconomic interdependence that follows liberalization. It will also provide measures of the potential gains from increased future trade between the countries of NAFTA and the European Union. This work offers a potential explanation of why the recent depreciation of the U.S. dollar against the euro has not resulted is a large change in trade flows between the United States and Europe. The work on modeling financial crises and trade and foreign investment policy will provide measures of the potential costs and benefits of liberalizing trade and foreign investment policy, especially in developing countries that liberalize their trade and foreign investment policies. It is essential that economists develop a better understanding of events in Mexico and Argentina over the past decade if they are to reassure policy makers and the members of the press and the public who are having second thoughts about such liberalization policies.