Global Economy Journal

Sports can help to increase foreign trade and promote global economic integration. Engaging in sports can provide visibility opportunities for countries and may spur the interest of firms as well as consumers in the respective foreign market. Sport could also help to infuse trust into cross-country business relationships. While previous studies have investigated the role of sport events on trade, this study analyzes whether countries can increase trade between them by engaging in sporting activities with each other. We use soccer, being the world’s most popular sport, as an example when investigating this potential bilateral sport-trade link. Our empirical strategy builds on the fact that many soccer matches between countries’ national teams are the result of a random drawing procedure. Thus, they are a possible source of exogenous variation. Using a gravity model framework, we test the proposed link for approximately 4,800 soccer matches that were played between 209 countries during the period 1995 through 2001. We also analyze the hypothesized underlying impact channel by estimating the impact on trade for goods that are likely to have different elasticity with respect to information and trust friction. The results are indicative of the hypothesis that countries that engage in sporting activities with each other enhance their bilateral trade. These results could have potentially interesting policy implications. Governments may want to consider actively promoting sporting activities together with countries with which they want to enhance their trade.

This paper theoretically modifies the Anderson and Wincoop () model on international trade to explain international tourism flows. In addition, this modified model can measure the effect of the Internet penetration at origin and destination countries through misinformation. The theoretical model implies that potential tourists use the Internet to gather information on their destination country through its websites. Through gravity model estimation, results show the significance of the Internet in the origin country as well as destination country.

This paper studies income inequality and globalization by decomposing economic globalization into trade intensity and financial integration, and also by differentiating the effect of globalization across developed and developing countries. Using panel data on 26 developed countries and 52 developing countries for the 1990–2010 period when globalization was accelerated, this study finds that financial integration affects the income inequality differently from trade intensity and the effect is in contrast across two groups of countries. For example, an increase in trade intensity would widen income inequality in developed countries, but it would reduce the inequality in developing countries. And, a deepening of the financial integration would reduce the income inequality in developed countries but increase the inequality in developing countries. These results suggest that income inequality of developing countries would deteriorate with an imprudent dependence on foreign financing or a rapid opening up of their financial markets to foreign investors, or when faced with more barriers on free international trade.

We developed a theoretical model capable to analyze U.S. fiscal and monetary policy effects on Mexican exports in order to provide an alternative approach to the study of economic interdependence. The model was estimated for the sample period of 1980–2013. The existing literature evidences quantified interdependence through trade flows and ignores the role of the U.S. fiscal and monetary policies. This paper uses the concept of sensitivity, from the economic interdependence literature, to verify the long and short run relationships between the U.S. and Mexico in a context of trade integration. Our findings confirm Mexico’s sensitivity to unanticipated shocks in particular coming from the U.S. monetary policy, the exchange rate and the world oil price.

Evidence suggests that advanced economies make and attract relatively more FDI as a share of GDP than developing countries. Comparing the composition of international liabilities across countries the paper argues that higher risks and regulatory barriers in developing countries are the primary reasons behind the relatively lower levels of FDI liabilities to GDP in developing countries. The paper uses a model with heterogeneous multinational firms to explain this empirical observations. In the model developed countries make relatively more FDI because the average productivity of firms in these countries is higher, thus there are relatively more firms with sufficiently high productivity levels, that can profitably enter into foreign markets.

This paper analyzes the relationship between research and development (R&D) and capital investment by domestic firms and the productivity of foreign affiliates of multinational enterprises in developed countries. We explain why “reverse spillovers” from domestic to foreign firms might differ when R&D and capital are considered as two separate channels. Using industry-level data for eight Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) economies (including the Czech Republic and Slovakia) in 2001–2007, we find robust evidence that R&D investment by local firms is positively associated with the productivity of affiliates of foreign firms. Our findings and theory add to the relatively scarce research on reverse spillovers and contribute to the literature on knowledge-seeking foreign direct investment (FDI).

This paper examines the effect of legal and financial conditions on the payment contract choice by empirically testing the predictions of Schmidt-Eisenlohr’s (2013) model with actual bilateral industry level trade finance data (at 2-digit level) from Turkey. Our results show that an improvement in contract enforcement and an increase in the financing costs in the importing country (exporting country) increases (decreases) the share of post-shipment sales. For the share of pre-payment sales, the opposite effects are estimated. Finally, we find that share of post-shipment sales (pre-payment sales) increases (decreases) in the number of products traded between partners in the past.

The study investigates the extent to which trade openness could determine consumption risk sharing. The findings from panel regressions on Sub-Saharan African countries suggest a significant contribution of trade integration in the allocation of consumption risk. Further results point to the importance of reducing corruption if countries are to unhinge domestic consumption from domestic production. Additionally, as countries achieve higher financial deepening, they could become independent from international financial reliance thereby enjoying less Consumption risk sharing. The study argues for policies to promote trade and fight corruption if the observed levels of risk sharing in Sub-Saharan Africa are to improve.