The Impact of Imports and Exports on a Country’s Quality of Life

This paper is a sequel to Sirgy et al. (Social Ind. Res. 68(3) (2004) 251), “The Impact of Globalization on a Country’s Quality of Life: Toward an Integrated Model” published in Social Indicators Research. That paper conceptualized globalization in terms of the free flow of four major components: (1) goods and services, (2) people, (3) capital, and (4) information. The current paper focuses on the free flow of goods and services, one of the four major components of globalization. Specifically, we (1) articulate the trade globalization construct, (2) show the complex mediating effects between trade globalization and QOL, and (3) describe under what conditions these positive vs. negative QOL effects are likely to occur. We develop a set of theoretical propositions to capture these mediating and moderating effects. Based on the theoretical model, we suggest the following public policy recommendations: (1) Encourage exporting firms not to outsource jobs. (2) Encourage firms to export more products in ways that can enhance their production efficiency. (3) Discourage firms from exporting culturally sensitive (and possibly offensive) products to culturally distant countries. (4) Encourage firms to export more products with potential for technology transfer. (5) Encourage firms in industries with a significant comparative advantage to increase exports. (6) Encourage imports of products that do not compete with high employment domestic industries where workers cannot easily transition to more productive employment. (7) Impose trade barriers as short-term solution to help␣threatened industries while helping those industries retool to become more competitive. (8)␣Assist displaced workers by re-training them to shift to industries with comparative advantage.     

The role of marriage in immigrants’ human capital investment under liquidity constraints

This paper presents a two-period human capital investment model, which is used to study the optimal investment decisions of credit-constrained married immigrants relative to single immigrants and native couples facing a perfect capital market. The model predicts that: (1) The comparative advantage in investment in local skills of one of the spouses may emerge from his/her higher growth rate of imported human capital. (2) The optimal investment of each spouse is non-increasing in the level of imported human capital of the spouse with the comparative advantage in investment, while it is non-decreasing in the level of imported human capital of the other spouse. (3) When two immigrants get married, the spouse with the comparative advantage in investment invests more than when he/she was single whereas the other spouse invests less.

经济全球化影响劳动就业的机理分析

经济全球化浪潮正以前所未有的方式和速度影响着人们的就业。经济全球化的直接含义是国际分工 ,因此在比较优势作用下不断扩展的国际贸易、资本的跨国流动以及由此推动的全球产业结构调整成为经济全球化影响劳动就业的途径。     

Trade and fertility in the developing world: the impact of trade and trade structure

In the literature on trade and development, fertility and trade have been widely discussed as two separate economic forces. However, an important recent contribution connects these two and suggests that international trade between developed and developing countries has an asymmetric effect on the demand for human capital. The asymmetry leads to a decline in fertility rates in developed countries and an increase in these rates in developing countries. We provide additional comprehensive empirical evidence in support of this novel hypothesis. Our findings suggest that countries that export skill-intensive manufacturing goods experience a decline in fertility rates, whereas in countries that export primary, low-skill-intensive goods, fertility rates are affected positively. Further, our findings indicate that the negative influence of manufacturing exports on fertility holds primarily and most strongly for middle-income countries where structural modernization and a growing manufacturing-intensive export sector is observed.     

Immigration and free trade with Mexico: protecting American workers against double jeopardy

Free trade may well increase immigration from Mexico to the United States before ultimately slowing it down. Rapid population growth, unemployment or underemployment of half the labor force, and vast ethnic and kinship links to the United States have given Mexican migration a stubborn momentum. Increased prosperity from free trade will give many would-be migrants the means to resettle in the U. S. Foreign competition will displace Mexican workers in small farms, state-owned enterprises, and less competitive industries, forcing some to migrate. The noneconomic incentives and expectations driving migration will also remain strong. Mexicans may see free trade as making the border a mere formality or as conferring an entitlement to live in the United States. On the U. S. side, free trade may well deepen the government's traditional complacency about border controls. Over the long-term, however, a successful free trade agreement could reduce immigration by improving Mexico's democracy and the quality of life, diminishing the prospects of mass asylum movements from Mexico, creating a better climate for effective family planning, and luring marginal, immigration-magnet industries from the U. S. to Mexico. In the United States, less- skilled American workers in some industries and regions can expect job displacement and other disruptions from free trade. Particularly vulnerable will be workers in perishable crop agriculture, border retail trade, construction, apparel, and light manufacturing such as furniture, auto parts and glass. Continued heavy immigration of Mexican and other foreign workers into those industries and communities will further impede the adjustment of resident workers by competing for jobs and consuming public resources needed for retraining and job search. To ease the adjustment of displaced workers, the U. S. must make Mexico's cooperation in restraining immigration a condition for free trade. Mexico's cooperation should include enforcement of its own laws against clandestine border crossing; action against alien smugglers, document forgers and transiting illegal aliens from Central America; and curbs on the reentry of aliens deported from the United States. U.S. initiatives that would cushion vulnerable American workers against the added disruption of immigration would be: better identification and screening of applicants for public assistance; tightened enforcement of safety and labor standards in immigrant-impacted firms and provision of legal workers to such firms; protection of public assistance resources through better screening and identification of applicants; and curbs on imports of temporary foreign workers for firms that will now have access to Mexican labor in Mexico. Finally, the United States must consistently press Mexico for higher safety, environmental and labor standards at the workplace to improve the job satisfaction and quality of life of working Mexicans who might otherwise migrate, as well as to narrow Mexico's labor cost advantages over the United States.     

Bertil Ohlin on Population,Trade, and Territorial Expansion

The international economic problems of the 1930s–in the aftermath of World War I and the depression—at first sight have few resonances with the present day. The leading powers of the time protected their industries behind high tariff walls. Most of them possessed colonies or were intent on regaining those lost in the war. Restoration of the free‐trade regime of the decades prior to 1913, and creation of a new financial architecture to support it, seemed a remote prospect. In all kinds of ways the post‐World War II and especially the post‐Cold War world is in vastly better shape. Yet some of the themes of the earlier period remain relevant. The colonies are gone and territorial expansion is virtually inadmissible, but the options for dealing with international imbalances in factor supplies and factor prices are otherwise the same: international trade, capital flows, and migration. The insight that international trade and international movements of productive factors could be substitutes owes much to the work of the Swedish economist Bertil Ohlin. Ohlin's magnum opus. Interregional and International Trade (1933), building on earlier work of Eli Heckscher, developed what became known as the Heckscher–Ohlin model of international trade. In its simplest form it described trade in a two‐region, two‐factor, two‐good economic system. With subsequent generalizations, the theory accommodated not just trade in goods but also movement of factors. Capital flows were principally of interest, but labor flows were formally analogous. The practical differences between the two, of course, were considerable: migration was not an acceptable mode of factor price equalization. Nor is it today, when worries about rapid population growth attach to poor countries rather than (as they did in the 1930s, if speciously) to industrialized states claiming lebensraum. Indeed, it is less so, since the population sizes of the sending countries are multiples of their 1930s levels and high migrant flows encounter resistance in the receiving countries. The passage reproduced below comes from a project on economic reconstruction and financial stabilization organized by the Carnegie Endowment and the International Chamber of Commerce. One output of this project was a volume International Economic Reconstruction: An Economists' and Businessmen's Survey of the Main Problems of Today (Paris: International Chamber of Commerce, 1936), over half of which consisted of a study entitled Introductory Report on the Problem of International Economic Reconstruction, by Ohlin. The excerpt is part of Chapter 7 of this report: The Problem of “Overpopulation,” Colonies, Markets and Raw Materials. Bertil Gotthard Ohlin (1899–1979) had a distinguished career as a politician as well as economist. He was a long‐time member of Sweden's parliament, in which he led the Liberal Party—mostly in opposition. During 1944–45 he was Minister of Trade. In 1977 he received the Nobel prize in economics (together with James Meade) for contributions to the theory of international trade.     

Population growth overshooting and trade in developing countries

This paper examines a developing economy using a family-optimization model in which the number of children is a normal good. Trade liberalization generates two effects: the income effect that increases population growth and the gender wage effect that, in the short run, increases, but, in the long run, decreases population growth. With higher income, families invest more in capital if the status of the capital is significant. Because female labor is complementary to capital, higher investment increases the relative wages of women and attracts them from child rearing into production. Ultimately, the population growth falls below the original level.      

Trade, population growth, and the environment in developing countries

We examine pollution in a developing country where fertility is endogenous and wealth increases welfare through status. When the country has defective environmental laws, it has a comparative advantage in capital-intensive “dirty” goods. Gains from trade due to trade liberalization then increase income and boost population growth. With strong incentives to save, they also stimulate investment, which hampers population growth. Because population growth crowds out labor supply, production of capital-intensive dirty goods first increases and then decreases. This yields a typical environmental Kuznets path: pollution increases at the earlier stages but decreases at the later stages of development.     

Social Capital Inequality and Subjective Wellbeing of Older Chinese

Using longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies, this study provides insights on comparative wellbeing outcomes for older people who are institutionally segregated into clusters that produce uneven social capital. We present the first study that examines how institutionalized social capital inequality, measured by the social capital gap generated by hukou (household registration) status in China, affects the wellbeing of older people. Our results show that high levels of social capital inequality are associated with lower subjective wellbeing, measured by life satisfaction. This general conclusion is robust to a number of sensitivity checks including alternative ways of measuring subjective wellbeing and inequality. We also find that the negative relationship between social capital inequality and subjective wellbeing is strongest for people with a non-urban hukou living in urban areas. Our findings highlight the need for policies aimed at narrowing the social capital gap and the dismantling of institutional structures that hinder upward social capital mobility.

     

劳动力年龄分布、老龄化趋势与出口比较优势

不仅劳动力相对数量影响出口比较优势,劳动力年龄分布同样影响出口比较优势。对此,本文采取动态面板数据系统GMM方法,利用我国2001-2010年28个制造业行业数据进行实证检验,在对FDI、全要素生产率和研发密度等变量进行控制后,发现16—29岁和30—44岁劳动力分布比重与行业出口贸易正相关．45—64岁劳动力分布比重与行业出口贸易负相关;而且,人口老龄化趋势对出口贸易不利。此外．传统要素禀赋理论在我国仍然发挥作用,资本劳动比也显著地与出口贸易负相关。     

中国制造业出口比较优势动态演变原因探析--基于人口年龄结构视角

人口年龄结构变动给中国出口比较优势动态演变带来了机遇。本文首先利用显示性比较优势指数、 Michaely 指数和净出口率指数衡量中国2000－2013年27个制造业行业的出口比较优势,发现现阶段中国出口比较优势仍然以劳动密集型商品为主,但出口比较优势开始向资本密集型商品转移。其次,分别利用三种人口老龄化和少子化指标对二者关系进行实证检验,发现无论是从生产还是消费角度来说,人口老龄化程度加剧提高了劳动密集型商品的相对价格,有利于资本密集型商品出口比较优势提升;如果只考虑出口,少儿人口比重下降对资本密集型商品的显示性比较优势有利,但对同时考虑进口和出口的 Michaely 指数和净出口率指数不利。此外,还发现外资流入和能源依赖度提高对行业RCA指数有利,全要素生产率和人力资本提高对Michaely 指数有利。     

Social Capital and Community Heterogeneity

Recent findings indicate that more pronounced community heterogeneity is associated with lower levels of social capital. These studies, however, concentrate on specific aspects in which people differ (such as income inequality or ethnic diversity). In the present paper, we introduce the number of parties in the local party system as a more encompassing measure of community heterogeneity. This builds on the argument that the number of relevant socio-economic cleavages in the population (i.e. heterogeneity) determines the level of party system fragmentation. Using data on 307 Flemish municipalities, we find that municipalities with a more heterogeneous population indeed have lower levels of social capital. Hence, our study endorses—and generalizes—previous results linking community heterogeneity to lower levels of social capital.

Subjective Well-Being and Social Capital in Belgian Communities. The Impact of Community Characteristics on Subjective Well-Being Indicators in Belgium

In this article, we investigate the effect of individual and community level characteristics on subjective well-being in Belgium. Various indicators for subjective well-being are being used in a multilevel analysis of the 2009 SCIF survey (n = 2,080) and the 2006 Belgian ESS sample (n = 1,798). On the individual level, most hypotheses on the determinants of subjective well-being were confirmed. Living with a partner and age were shown to have strong effects, but also social capital indicators had a significant positive effect on subjective well-being. All these effects remained significant controlling for optimism. On the community level, especially unemployment rate had a negative impact on subjective well-being. The analysis further demonstrates that in homogeneous regions, community characteristics have a far weaker impact on subjective well-being indicators than in economically more heterogeneous regions.     

Measuring Social Capital and Its Differentials by Family Structures

Social capital has often been invoked to explain differences in children’s well-being by family structure. That is, developmental outcome for children in lone or step parent family is not at par with that of children from intact family because parental investments on children may be lower not only in financial and human capital but also in social capital. This proposition has been difficult to examine in greater depth because of lack of conceptual clarity and of data to measure social capital. Using a definition of social capital as the “ability to secure benefits through membership in networks and other social structures”, we focus on the impact of family structures on social capital engendered by three types of networks: (a) informal ties with kin, families, friends, neighbours, and workmates; (b) generalized relationships with local people, people in civic groups, and people in general; and, (c) relationships through institutions. In particular, we examine differences in the measures of social capital among women living with no children in various marital arrangements, and women living with children in intact, step, and lone parent families. Data from the Canadian 2003 General Social Survey on Social Engagement confirm that social capital is indeed greater in intact families than in lone parent families. Mothers in intact families (especially married mothers) have larger informal networks, are members of more primordial and purposive organizations, have greater trust in people in the family, in the neighbourhood, and in people in general, and have greater confidence in government or business institutions. In general, social capital of mothers in step families is in between that of married mothers in intact families and lone mothers. Thus, the assumption in the literature that family structure can serve as a proxy for social capital may be justified. However, this study contributes a unique way of measuring social capital in terms of networks if and when data are available and a way of investigating the relationship between family structure and social capital; that is, the former as a determinant of the latter.     

已婚独生女相对资源优势与单独居住选择研究——基于苏州市吴中区的调查

第一代独生子女大规模进入婚育年龄,由于此类家庭关系的特殊性,势必对传统的家庭居住方式产生冲击。文章利用2006年苏州市20-29岁育龄妇女家庭户调查资料,建立已婚独生女资源优势变量,通过列联交互表与卡方检验的方法,判断资源优势与独生女单独居住的关联性。研究结果表明：已婚独生女单独居住与其社会资本和文化资本优势呈显著负相关,与其经济资本优势呈正相关。夫妻间资本优势影响家庭权力分配,并影响到居住决策,且社会资本和文化资本优势影响力超过经济资本优势。鉴于此,本文提出“优势一选择”理论予以解释,认为独生女依据自己不同的比较资源优势,依次选择自己意愿的居住方式。     

An experimental analysis of the relationship between species combination and community persistence

Among many stabilizing factors for community dynamics, nonlinear biological interactions such as type III functional response have been widely considered to be major characteristics. However, most experimental biological communities employed so far had quite simple structures. Therefore, the possibility that the conclusions in earlier studies were dependent on simple community structure is undeniable. In this study, using a multiple-species experimental community, we evaluated which combinations of component species and what kinds of interspecific interactions allow communities to persist and how these contribute to community persistence. We conducted experimental communities using two species of beans, the adzuki bean (Vigna angularis) and the red kidney bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), two species of bean weevils, the Mexican bean weevil (Zabrotes subfasciatus, Coleoptera: Bruchidae) and adzuki bean weevil (Callosobruchus chinensis, Coleoptera: Bruchidae), and two species of parasitic wasp, Heterospilus prosopidis (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) and Anisopteromalus calandrae (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae). The outcome of multiple-generation experimental communities was explained by the characteristics of component species obtained from short-term experiments. In our two resources–two herbivores–one carnivore system, the strong density-dependent attack ability of one parasitic wasp species (A. calandrae) led to the extinction of C. chinensis. On the other hand, the weak density-dependent attack ability of the other parasitic wasp species (H. prosopidis) led to system persistence. Our overall results show that, in a multiple-species community, the combination of species itself is more important for community persistence than are the characteristics of the particular species. Received: September 29, 1997 / Accepted: October 5, 1998     

The encouragement of emigration by British trade unions, 1850–1900

During the nineteenth century periodic fluctuations in industrial activity, strikes and lock-outs which accompanied the struggle of unions for recognition, and the ever increasing consciousness of the industrial worker that one serious trade setback could wipe out the savings of his lifetime, were important ‘pushes’ to emigration from the United Kingdom. The British trade unions responded to this ‘push’ from their own members and from thousands of unorganized workers for relief through emigration.

Contrary to the statements of historians of the English trade-union movement, emigration was not a project of British trade unions in the 1850 decade only; in fact, most of the unions in England's basic industries, mining, iron, textiles and engineering, as well as in many other smaller industries such as glass, cutlery and the building trades, looked upon emigration as necessary to improve the standard of life of the English workers. This viewpoint was natural to the ‘New Unionists’ of the 1850's, who accepted the principle that supply and demand regulated wages and prices. The trade unions, however, disapproved of emigration to the United States where workers would go to a rival trade; such emigration could not diminish the absolute number of workers in the industry. Instead, they advocated emigration to farms in the British colonies; but, nevertheless, most of the persons aided by English trade unions to emigrate went to the United States. The hesitancy of skilled workers to leave a familiar occupation appeared to be the most important reason for this.

Desirable as emigration was to trade unionists in times of trade crises, the leaders met overwhelming difficulties when they tried to use it as a safety valve. In the cotton famine and the iron-trade lock-outs of the sixties, for example, unions had no money to aid emigration, and were forced to seek grants from United States manufacturers to help needy workers to go to America. Although they were relatively helpless in times of crisis, the trade unions assisted emigration during good years, believing that such a policy would ease the severity of the inevitable next crisis. Most of the established unions had regularly operating emigration grants by which members in good standing could receive a sum of money in aid of emigration, usually enough to pay at least one passage to America. This benefit helped some of the most skilled workers and loyal union members to leave England for America.

The trade unions, in making these grants, had to adjust the amount of money given to the ‘state of health’ of the union treasury; thus, during crises when the treasuries were low the emigration benefits were often discontinued. As the years passed and the number of British workers in America increased, the unions hesitated to send men abroad during depressions or strikes in the United States. Not only did American workmen complain of such competition, but also English workers disliked to see men whom they had previously assisted to ‘take their labour abroad’ return home.

From 1850 until well into the 1880's, when most of the English trade unions were encouraging and aiding emigration, their influence actually was most effective toward that end in times of prosperity in the United States. It was the depression of the eighties and the rise of unions of unskilled workers and leaders who looked for improvement through Socialism rather than through adjusting the supply of labour, which finally eclipsed emigration as a panacea for the English working class.     

Social Capital and Casino Gambling in U.S. Communities

This paper empirically analyzes the impact that the spread of casino gambling has on social capital in communities throughout the United States. Social capital is a networking process that translates into an individual’s effectiveness in the community and workplace, and binds communities together. Several recent studies have also demonstrated a link between higher levels of social capital and quality of life. In this study, social capital is measured based on six dimensions: trust, civic, volunteerism, group participation, giving, and meeting obligations of family and friends. Using data from the DDB Needham database for the years 1978, 1988, and 1998, regression analysis is conducted on over 300 Metropolitan Statistical Areas throughout the United States to determine the impact that the spread of casino gambling has on social capital. The results of the analysis indicate that the presence of casino gambling significantly reduces social capital when a casino is located within 15 miles of a community, suggesting that a casino’s location influences a community’s quality of life and should be a consideration when deciding on the merits of gambling legalization.     

Richer in Money, Poorer in Relationships and Unhappy? Time Series Comparisons of Social Capital and Well-Being in Luxembourg

The worrying decline of social capital (Putnam in Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community. Simon and Schuster, New York, 2000) and the disappointing trends of subjective well-being characterising the US (Easterlin in Nations and households in economic growth. Academic Press, New York, 1974; Easterlin and Angelescu in Happiness and growth the world over: time series evidence on the happiness-income paradox, 2009; Easterlin et al. in Proc Natl Acad Sci 107:22463–22468, 2010) raise urgent questions for modern societies: is the erosion of social capital a feature of the more developed and richer countries or is it rather a characteristic aspect of the American society? To test the hypothesis that the erosion of social capital and declining well-being are not a common feature of richer countries, present work focuses on Luxembourg. The main results are: (1) the erosion of social capital is not a legacy of the richest countries in the world; (2) between 1999 and 2008, people in Luxembourg experienced a substantial increase in almost every proxy of social capital; (3) both endowments and trends of social capital and subjective well-being differ significantly within the population. Migrants participate less in social relationships and report lower levels of well-being; (4) the positive relationship between trends of subjective well-being and social capital found in previous literature is confirmed.     

工资上涨会降低我国的比较优势吗？

低廉的劳动力成本一直是我国参与国际分工的比较优势,但近几年随着我国劳动力工资水平的提高,很多发达国家逐渐将产品的生产外包业务转至它国。对此,本文搜集了我国28个产业的数据,分析工资对产品价格变动的影响程度。结果表明工资与制造业各行业的比较优势具有正相关关系,但工资上升并没有对其比较优势产生根本性转变,主要原因在于劳动生产率的上升快于工资水平的上升,这在一定程度上抵消了工资上涨对比较优势的负面效应。