In endeavouring to explain the empirical puzzle that the sunk costs of exporting are important, but that, at the same time, trade flows do not, on average, survive for very long, this paper explores the concepts of core and peripheral markets. First, it illustrates that if the importance of sunk costs as well as the expected future returns from exporting are different, depending on whether the export decision refers to a core or a peripheral market, it is plausible that while firms will tend to stay on the core market for a long time, they will enter and exit the peripheral market much more frequently. Second, using firm-product-destination-specific export data for all firms in the Swedish food chain for the period 1997-2007, an empirical test is carried out to ascertain whether there is support for the hypothesis that trade duration will be longer for core markets. Employing two variables that capture different aspects of the core/periphery dimension, it is found that firms will indeed tend to stay longer in their core markets, while export decisions regarding peripheral markets are much less long-term. The conclusion, therefore, is that the empirical puzzle can be explained by taking into account the fact that the trade hysteresis literature builds on data on the core market decision to export or not, and that the trade survival literature also includes data on decisions to stay in or exit peripheral markets.

Empirical studies and theoretical analyses examine the causes and consequences of disruptions in cross-border economic relationships, including political conflict, economic sanctions, and institutional collapse. Cross-border economic relationships gradually strengthened in the decades after World War II; for most of the postwar period, international trade and investment have grown faster than output, a process often termed “globalization.” In recent years, however, economic relationships have grown more fragile, subject to disruption by such factors as political conflict, economic sanctions, and the dissolution of institutional arrangements. This timely CESifo volume offers empirical studies and theoretical analyses that examine the causes and consequences of these disrupted economic relationships. Contributors propose a new theoretical framework for understanding the economic impact of intergroup conflict and develop a predictive model to analyze the contagion of regional wars. They offer empirical studies of the economic effect of targeted sanctions and boycotts, including those imposed upon Iran, Russia, and Myanmar; argue provocatively that natural disasters are associated with increased international trade; analyze trade duration, finding previously identified explanatory factors to be insufficient for explaining variations in trade survival over time; and critically review the hypothesis that oil was a crucial factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Contributors Daniel P. Ahn, Tibor Besedeš, Kilian Heilmann, Wolfgang Hess, Julian Hinz, Melise Jaud, Tristan Kohl, Madina Kukenova, Chenmei Li, Rodney D. Ludema, Volker Nitsch, Maria Persson, Chiel Klein Reesink, Arthur Silve, Enrico Spolaore, Martin Strieborny, Marvin Suesse, Peter A. G. van Bergeijk, Thierry Verdier, Romain Wacziarg

As indicated by the high level of food prices and volatility thereof, the international food and agricultural trade has been characterized by increasing uncertainty in recent years. Macroeconomic fluctuations seem to affect food and agricultural markets more strongly than in the past. The liberalization of agricultural policy, especially in industrialized countries, and the integration of world markets expose actors on domestic as well as on foreign markets to increased exchange rate and price fluctuations. This book investigates the determinants of food and agricultural trade flows of European countries using various econometric approaches. Where each of the chapters focuses on a particular issue, the overall topic of the first part of this book is to identify by what means the trend towards general liberalization and especially European integration has affected the amount of bilateral trade. Moreover, in the second part the book investigates the strategic pricing behavior of European producers in a liberalized global economy and elaborates how this behavior effects trade flows.

African export ventures often fail early, a trend that causes waste, uncertainty, and discouragement. This book shows how governments and donors can help boost African export sustainability through a mixture of traditional policy prescriptions and selected proactive interventions.

This book examines driving factors and the effects of globalisation on economic development through firm and product-level data. The book is organised into four themes, i.e., productivity, innovation, wage and income gap, and within-firm reallocation of resources. The comprehensiveness and richness of firm and product-level data shed light upon the channels through which trade and investment affect firms’ competitiveness and unveil factors shaping firms’ heterogeneous responses towards globalisation. The book looks at Asian economies as well as Australia and how they have experienced substantial structural change and become more integrated into the global economy and will be a useful reference for those who are interested in learning more about the relationship between globalisation and firm performance. This book will appeal to policy makers and researchers interested in the impact of globalisation on firm performance.

In the post-liberalization period, India has slowly but steadily tried to foster innovation to improve competitive efficiency of Indian manufacturing and thus boost global competitiveness of the industrial sector. Foreign direct investment was looked upon as a major source of technology paradigm shift; in recent times, industrial firms have been investing overseas, even in countries to which they used to export, based on their technological capabilities. Firms in Indian manufacturing industries have also attempted to bring about technological upgrades through imports of design and drawings (disembodied technology) against lump sum, royalty and technical knowhow fees, and imports of capital machinery (embodied technology) where the technology is embodied in the capital good itself. This volume comprises empirical contributions on this emerging phenomenon, on a range of issues including the role of R&D; mergers, acquisitions and technological efforts; technological determinants of competitive advantages; the role of small and medium enterprises and regional patterns; technological efforts and global operations; and the role of industrial clusters in promoting innovation and competitiveness. This book was originally published as a special issue of Innovation and Development.

This definitive Research Handbook explores the restructuring strategies of globalised firms, bringing together a wide range of topics from export exit, subsidiary divestment and market re-entry to relocation, offshoring and backshoring.