Domestic Trade Successfully Operated By A Foreign-Trade Enterprise

Ahub of commerce in SouthwesternChina, Chengdu in Sichuan Provinceis well known for its thriving and welldeveloped commerce and trade, with rowupon row of modern shopping centers andbazaars scattered along various specializedbusiness streets. One can imagine how fierceis the competition behind the scenes of thebustle and boom of business! Downtown, anarea known as the Manhattan of Chengdu, anewly built commercial building is growingup, becoming one of the five biggest shoppingcenters in the city; it is the Chengdu ForeignTrade building which opened to businessonly a year ago.

The effect of domestic and foreign trade coordination on technological innovation： complements or substitutes？

Based on the theory of technology spillover in international trade, this paper discusses the technological innovation effect of trade by taking the influence of domestic trade into account. Under the constraint of the production possibility frontier, there is either complementarity or substitutability between domestic and foreign trade. It must be decided whether resources should be concentrated in one of the sectors （trade specialization） or instead allocated equally （trade equalization） between the two sectors. This paper firstly discusses how domestic trade and foreign trade work together to influence technological innovation, and how trade equalization and specialization affect different types of innovation. Using a provincial-level panel dataset from 2007 to 2015 in China, this paper constructs the indicators of domestic and foreign trade linkage and examines the impact of trade on innovation. The findings show that trade equalization mainly promotes incremental innovation, while trade specialization improves radical innovation. Thus, in the area of incremental innovation, attention should be paid to the equalized development of domestic and foreign trade, while in areas pursuing radical innovation, emphasis should be put on the specialization of the trade sector, avoiding equal allocation of resources to the two sectors.

Design Issues for Linking Emissions Trading Schemes--A Qualitative Analysis for Schemes from Europe, Asia and North America

The paper focuses on links between the EU ETS （European Union Emissions Trading Scheme） and selected （domestic） greenhouse gas ETS （emissions trading schemes） from Asia and North America which could open up a perspective to keep the idea of emissions trading alive on a global scale and confront the actual uncertainty in future climate policy. The approach consists of investigating qualitatively the essential requirements of this alternative bottom-up approach. It is evaluated if variations or inconsistencies in the structure and design of domestic ETS as well as legal and institutional characteristics harm or facilitate the concept of linking with the EU ETS. The evaluation of systems leads to the exclusion of systems with voluntary character, relative caps, unrestricted borrowing and price caps from the group of potential linking candidates.

Liberalization of Staple Crops： Lessons from the Mexican Experience in Maize

In this paper the authors inquire why, after more than 25 years of domestic agricultural reforms in Mexico and 15 years of trade liberalization of maize under the North American Free Trade Agreement （NAFTA）, the domestic production of maize, a non-competitive crop and the major staple in Mexico, has increased. The authors present new empirical evidence showing that, as expected, maize prices in Mexico dropped until 2006 and have experienced a process of convergence with USA prices, and maize imports from the USA have increased. However, despite lower prices, maize production in Mexico has trended upward since 1992, two years before the beginning of NAFTA＇s implementation. Based on the heterogeneity of maize production in Mexico, three possible explanations are proposed to explain this unexpected outcome： government supports to big commercial farmers in the agriculturally rich North of Mexico; the persistence of maize production by subsistence farmers; and to a lesser degree, increasing yields on some irrigated maize farms. We finish the paper by drawing lessons from the experience of Mexico for other Less Developed Countries.

China’s spatial(dis)integration as a multiethnic paradox:what do the interprovincial data say?

Using China’s interprovincial panel data,this paper shows that the negative effect of distance-related transactions costs on interprovincial trade tends to rise from 2000 to 2010.After constructing China’s 56 ethnic groups into a single,interprovincial similarity index,I cannot find any evidence that supports the view that ethnic links should serve as a factor promoting bilateral trade.However,my estimated coefficients on 37 major ethnic groups show that both positive and negative ethnic influences on trade exist in China.Specifically,14 ethnic groups(Lahu,Qiang,Jingpo,Tu,Mongol,Manchu,Hui,Zhuang,Dongxiang,Daur,Kirgiz,She,Maonan,and Tibetan)are found to contribute to China’s interprovincial trade,while five ethnic groups(Han,Va,Kazak,Dai,and Blang)tend to impede China’s interprovincial trade.Since all these estimated results are statistically significant,the ethnic influences on China’s spatial(dis)integration remain only but as a paradox.