Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics--Trade and Travel: Insights to be Gained from the Survey of International Air Travelers

研究人员建议使用一个独特的数据集，国际航空旅行者调查(SIAT)，这将使该联合PI关于国际贸易与国际旅行相互作用的博士论文成为可能。SIAT涵盖了来自美国的所有海外航空旅行。美国，按目的地国家、旅行目的和旅行者的特征，包括居住国。从1993年到现在，这些数据是按季度提供的。在她的论文中，合作者将使用SIAT来调查至少三个主题。首先，我们将考察贸易和旅行之间的因果关系方向。使用适当的面板估计技术，将确定双边商务旅行是否有助于预测双边贸易，反之亦然。其次，本文将探讨移民与双边贸易之间日益确立的积极关系背后的机制。移民存量与移民的双边商务和休闲旅行之间的相互作用将对美国出口和美国进口进行估计。这一假设将被检验，即与休闲旅游的互动将相对于双边进口的商务旅行的互动更强。这将证实文献中的猜测，即移民对进口的影响比对出口的影响更大，反映了移民对原产国商品的品味的影响，以及他们通过商业联系和提供市场信息促进贸易的效果。第三，联合PI将利用SIAT来扩展最近的研究结果，这些结果表明，商业和社交网络对差异化产品的双边贸易的积极影响强于同质产品。有人推测，这些结果反映了差异化产品的更多信息密集度。如果这是真的，那么差异化产品应该需要更大的销售努力和更多的售后服务，我们预计会发现从双边商务旅行到双边贸易以及从双边贸易到差异化产品的更强的因果关系。由于SIAT是一个未知的数据集，并且我们担心其质量，PI‘sosoed获得了一小笔种子赠款，并购买了2000年第一季度的数据用于初步测试。PI将双边商务旅行添加到美国双边贸易的标准横截面引力模型中。如果双边商务旅行没有解释能力，这对整个SIAT数据集的有用性来说是个不好的预兆。事实上，PI发现，双边贸易与美国的双边出口和双边进口都有很强的正相关关系，尤其是前者。这些初步结果对SIAT数据的质量是一个积极的指标，并表明使用完整的数据集可以获得许多洞察力。非正式贸易壁垒的性质和数量对国际贸易的重要性仍然是国际经济学中的一个重要问题。这项研究将有助于更好地了解非正式贸易壁垒是如何发挥作用的，以及它们有多大。通过量化国际商务旅行导致国际贸易的程度，这项研究还可以帮助评估全球许多促进商务旅行以创造贸易为目的的政府计划，包括由美国商务部赞助的贸易代表团。

The researchers propose to use a unique data set, the Survey of International Air Travelers (SIAT),that will make possible the doctoral dissertation of the co-PI on the subject of the interaction ofinternational trade with international travel. The SIAT covers all overseas air travel from theU. S., by destination country, purpose of trip, and characteristics of the travelers includingcountry of residence. These data are available quarterly for the period 1993 to the present.Intellectual merit. In her dissertation the co-PI will use the SIAT to investigate at leastthree topics. First, the direction of causality between trade and travel will be examined. Usingappropriate panel estimation techniques, it will be determined whether bilateral business travelhelps to forecast bilateral trade and vice-versa. Second, the dissertation will explore themechanisms that underlie the increasingly well-established positive relationship betweenimmigration and bilateral trade. The interactions between immigrant stocks and bilateralbusiness and leisure travel by immigrants will be estimated for both U.S. exports and U.S.imports. The hypothesis will be tested that the interaction with leisure travel will be strongerrelative to the interaction with business travel for bilateral imports than for bilateral exports.This would confirm the conjecture in the literature that the stronger impact of immigrants onimports than exports reflects the effect of immigrant taste for goods from their countries of originover and above their promotion of trade through business contacts and provision of marketinformation. Third, the co-PI will use the SIAT to extend recent results showing that businessand social networks have a stronger positive impact on bilateral trade in differentiated thanhomogeneous products. It has been conjectured that these results reflect the more informationintensivenature of differentiated products. If this is true than differentiated products shouldrequire both greater sales effort and more after-sales service, and we expect to find strongercausal relationships running from bilateral business travel to bilateral trade and vice-versa fordifferentiated than for homogeneous products.Because the SIAT is an unknown data set and we were concerned about its quality, the PI'sobtained a small seed grant and purchased data for the first quarter of 2000 for the purpose ofpreliminary testing. The PI's added bilateral business travel to a standard cross-sectional gravitymodel of bilateral U.S. trade. If bilateral business travel had no explanatory power it wouldaugur poorly for the usefulness of the full SIAT data set. In fact, the PI's found that bilateral businesstravel has a strong positive association with both U.S. bilateral exports and bilateral imports,especially the former. These preliminary results are a positive indicator for the quality of theSIAT data and suggest there is much insight to be gained from use of the complete data set.Broader impacts. The qualitative nature and quantitative importance of informal barriersto international trade remains an important question in international economics. The study willhelp to gain a better understanding of how informal barriers to trade work and how large theyare. By quantifying the extent to which international business travel causes international trade,the study could also help to evaluate the many government programs worldwide that promotebusiness travel for the purpose of creating trade, including trade missions sponsored by the U.S.Department of Commerce.