Collaborative Research: International Buyer-Seller Matches

合作研究：国际买家与卖家的匹配

• 批准号: 1616062
• 负责人: Jonathan Eaton
• 金额: $ 9.79万
• 依托单位: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-14 至 2017-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1616062&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; International; Buyer; Seller

International trade is the outcome of ongoing interaction between individual buyers and sellers. Official statistics have historically revealed only the aggregate trade flows that their activity generates. Quite naturally, trade theory sought to model these aggregates with little attention to the role of individual interactions, which were hidden from view. A limitation is that research was unable to delve into the underlying reasons for such phenomena as the decline of trade with distance or the sluggish response of trade to changes in international prices. This research exploits newly available data on individual international transactions, from the United States, Colombia, and China, to study the trading relationships among individual exporters and importers. The project has four components. The first is the construction of panel datasets linking domestic buyers and foreign sellers through their international transactions. Each commercial shipment generates a customs record that reveals the identity of both the importing and exporting firm. In addition, the United States, Colombia and China all collect extensive firm- or plant-level panel data on their domestic producers. By merging China-U.S. shipments and Colombia-U.S. shipments with these producer-level surveys, the researchers on this project will create large panel data sets that follow importer-exporter relationships through time, with information on the current state of both parties to each transaction. These data sets will permit very detailed analyses of a wide range of issues concerning trade dynamics and firm-level performance. They will be made available through the Census Bureau to all researchers with the proper security clearance, and they will provide the basis for further analysis within the remainder of this project. The next component of the project will examine the quality of trade statistics generated from the shipments data. Inconsistency between exports reported by one country and the corresponding imports reported by another has plagued the analysis of international trade. For example, what Colombia reports exporting to the United States in 2007 differs by 8 percent from what the United States reports importing from Colombia. These datasets provide a tool to diagnose the discrepancies. Combined, the shipment records of the exporting and importing country reveal, for example, whether discrepancies arise in the aggregate statistics because they are based on different sets of shipments or different valuations placed on the same shipments. This component of the research should prove useful to the construction of trade statistics. The third component of the project will describe buyer-seller interactions. These datasets connect firms to each other through their trading relationships. Network theory, which provides various metrics for describing the potentially very complex connections among members of a network, is a natural means of interpreting these connections. The metrics thus provide insight, for example, into the extent to which a single widely-connected buyer or seller contributes to international trade. The matched datasets will allow the observation of the propensity with which different types of firms form links with each other. Copula theory provides a natural means of describing the matching behavior of different types of firms. Preliminary evidence suggests, for example, little tendency for large firms and small firms to differ in the extent to which they match with other large or small firms. In terms of size, in other words, matching is neither positively nor negatively assortative. This component of the research provides insight, for example, into the vulnerability of trade to the potential collapse of a single entity and the extent to which growth in trade is the consequence of new trading relationships or expansion of trade within existing ones. The final component of the project will use the data to guide the design of economic models of international trade. Recognizing the discrete nature of individual transactions and the behavior of individual firms involved requires a radical reformulation of international trade theory. The dynamics of network formation can be described in terms of a paired set of generation-recombination processes. A generic model that is fairly devoid of specific assumptions about behavior can thus be applied to examine features that a wide class of economic models must satisfy to explain basic features of the data. The research will then turn to specific formulations of firm behavior that connect trading relationships to other decisions, such as hiring and investment. This component of the research should prove useful to the development of a measurement-based dynamic theory of international trade that reflects the interaction of individual firms.

国际贸易是个体买家和卖家之间持续互动的结果。官方统计数据历来只显示它们的活动所产生的总贸易流量。很自然地，贸易理论试图对这些总量进行建模，而很少关注个体相互作用的作用，这是隐藏在视野之外的。一个局限性是，研究无法深入探讨贸易因距离而减少或贸易对国际价格变化反应迟钝等现象的根本原因。本研究利用美国、哥伦比亚和中国的新的国际交易数据，研究各个出口商和进口商之间的贸易关系。该项目有四个组成部分。第一个是构建通过国际交易将国内买家和外国卖家联系起来的面板数据集。每一次商业装运都产生一份海关记录，显示进出口公司的身份。此外，美国、哥伦比亚和中国都收集了关于其国内生产商的大量公司或工厂层面的面板数据。通过将中美出货量和中美出货量与这些生产商层面的调查相结合，该项目的研究人员将创建大型面板数据集，这些数据集将随着时间的推移跟踪进出口商关系，并提供有关每笔交易双方当前状态的信息。这些数据集将使人们能够非常详细地分析有关贸易动态和公司一级业绩的各种问题。它们将通过人口普查局提供给所有具有适当安全许可的研究人员，它们将为该项目剩余部分的进一步分析提供基础。该项目的下一个组成部分将审查从货运数据生成的贸易统计数据的质量。一个国家报告的出口与另一个国家报告的相应进口之间的不一致，一直困扰着国际贸易分析。例如，哥伦比亚报告的2007年对美国的出口与美国报告的从哥伦比亚的进口相差8%。这些数据集提供了诊断差异的工具。例如，出口国和进口国的货运记录结合在一起，可以显示出总体统计数据中是否存在差异，因为它们是基于不同的货运或对同一批货运的不同估价。研究的这一部分应证明对贸易统计的编制有用。该项目的第三个组成部分将描述买方和卖方的互动。这些数据集通过交易关系将公司彼此连接起来。网络理论为描述网络成员之间潜在的非常复杂的联系提供了各种度量，是解释这些联系的自然方法。因此，这些指标提供了洞察力，例如，了解一个广泛联系的买方或卖方对国际贸易的贡献程度。匹配的数据集将允许观察不同类型的公司彼此形成联系的倾向。Copula理论提供了一种描述不同类型企业匹配行为的自然方法。例如，初步证据表明，大公司和小公司在与其他大公司或小公司匹配的程度上几乎没有什么不同的趋势。换句话说，就规模而言，匹配既不是积极的，也不是消极的。例如，研究的这一部分使人们能够深入了解贸易在单一实体可能崩溃时的脆弱性，以及贸易增长在多大程度上是新的贸易关系或现有贸易关系内贸易扩大的结果。该项目的最后一部分将利用这些数据指导国际贸易经济模型的设计。要认识到个别交易的离散性和所涉及的个别企业的行为，就需要对国际贸易理论进行彻底的重新表述。网络形成的动力学可以用一组成对的生成-重组过程来描述。因此，一个基本上没有关于行为的特定假设的通用模型可以用来检验各种经济模型必须满足的特征，以解释数据的基本特征。然后，研究将转向将交易关系与其他决策（如招聘和投资）联系起来的公司行为的具体公式。这一部分的研究应证明是有益的发展计量为基础的动态理论的国际贸易，反映了个别公司的互动。