Browsing by Subject "WTO"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Globalization and State Capitalism: Assessing Vietnam's Accession to the WTO
    (CESifo Working Paper Series, 2017-08-28) Baccini, L; Impullitti, G; Malesky, EJ
    What do state-owned enterprises (SOEs) do? How do they respond to market incentives? Can we expect substantial efficiency gains from trade liberalization in economies with a strong presence of SOEs? Using a new dataset of Vietnamese firms we document a set of empirical regularities distinguishing SOEs from private firms. We embed some of these features characterizing SOEs operations in a model of trade with firm heterogeneity and show that they can hinder the selection effects of openness and tame the aggregate productivity gains from trade. We empirically test these predictions analyzing the response of Vietnamese firms to the 2007 WTO accession. Our result show that WTO accession is associated with higher probability of exit, lower markups, and substantial increases in productivity for private firms but not for SOEs. Domestic barriers to entry and preferential access to credit are key drivers of the different response of SOEs to trade liberalization. Our estimates suggest that the overall productivity gains would have been about 66% larger in a counterfactual Vietnamese economy without SOEs.
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    Monopoly Money: Foreign Investment and Bribery in Vietnam, a Survey Experiment
    (American Journal of Political Science, 2015-02) Malesky, EJ; Gueorguiev, DD; Jensen, NM
    ©2014, Midwest Political Science Association. Prevailing work argues that foreign investment reduces corruption, either by competing down monopoly rents or diffusing best practices of corporate governance. We argue that the mechanisms generating this relationship are not clear because the extant empirical work is too heavily drawn from aggregations of total foreign investment entering an economy. Alternatively, we suggest that openness to foreign investment has differential effects on corruption even within the same country and under the same domestic institutions over time. We argue that foreign firms use bribes to enter protected industries in search of rents, and therefore we expect variation in bribe propensity across sectors according to expected profitability. We test this effect using a list experiment embedded in three waves of a nationally representative survey of 20,000 foreign and domestic businesses in Vietnam, finding that the effect of economic openness on the probability to engage in bribes is conditional on policies that restrict investment.
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    Rent(s) Asunder: Sectoral Rent Extraction Possibilities and Bribery by Multi-National Corporations
    (2011) Gueorguiev, Dimitar D; Malesky, Edmund J; Jensen, Nathan M
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    Trade Liberalization and State-Owned Enterprises: Evidence from Vietnam's Accession to the WTO
    (2013-08) Baccini, Leonardo; Impullitti, Giammario; Malesky, Edmund J
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    U.S./China Trade Disputes in the post-Recession Political Landscape
    (2013-12-30) Ruby, Ethan
    This paper investigates the connection between the recent economic recession and an increase in trade disputes between the United States and China. Overall, I conclude political factors exacerbated by the recession, rather than economic considerations, were the catalyst for an increase in disputes. Misconceptions by the American public concerning the importance of manufacturing in the U.S. economy, political rhetoric, and fear of China’s rise led the United States to implement a series of economically ill- advised protectionist tariffs on Chinese goods. These tariffs in turn lead to an increase in WTO disputes between the United States and China. Given the severe economic consequences and the growing importance of Sino-American trade relations, it is imperative the United States actively seeks to curb protectionism and reduce trade disputes with China.