Ensaios em economia internacional

Resumo

This thesis is composed of three essays which analyse the effects of trade openness and of credit market frictions in the welfare of individuals. Each essay forms one chapter of this thesis. The first examines the role of trade openness in a crisis context. The second examines the ináationary consequences in a shortterm horizon of a policy which reduces trade barriers. The third analyses how credit markets impact the trade pattern and the welfare of individuals when countries trade. The first chapter investigates empirically the impact of trade openness on the real exchange rate devaluations that results from a large and unexpected fall in capital ináows. In order to test that effect of trade openness, this essay presents two tests which relate the exchange rate variation and the openness level. The firrst runs an OLS regression in a cross-section data which contains the relevant variables regarding to sudden stops. The second runs a TSLS regression in a time-series-cross-section data. Both tests find strong evidence that trade openness is the economic feature, under exclusive control of the country policymaker, that provides the most powerful effect in the trade balance given currency devaluations. The second chapter presents a simulation of a policy which reduces the import tariff in a fictitious country that shares the same economic features of Brazilian economy. The framework used to create the economy is based on the financial accelerator model for a small open economy of Gertler, Gilchrist and Natalucci (2003), but I extend it to consider import tariff as a policy variable. The results show that tariff reductions must be coordinated with monetary policy in order to optimize the welfare of individuals. The third chapter explores the relationship between quality of the credit markets and the trade pattern and considers the effects of that relationship on welfare of individuals. Using a general equilibrium model with innovation financing, this essay derives the trade pattern between two countries equal in all aspects, except in the quality of credit markets. Innovation arises in most of cases in the country with the best credit market, whereas the other country devotes a larger share of its labor endowment to manufacture goods without innovation content. A welfare analysis shows that opening to trade may hurt welfare of individuals for a period, but in the long run all of them are better under free trade than if they were under autarky. This fact raises a question: when the long run benefits of opening to trade compensate the short run costs? Calculations show that opening to trade is more likely to be worth when economies are not small, knowledge spills over countries and multinational corporations exist. Moreover, the inequality between residents of both countries is smaller in this setup.

Ficha do documento

Tipo

Tese

Ano

2007

Instituição

Fundação Getulio Vargas

Fonte

Repositório da FGV

Idioma

Português

Acesso

Acesso aberto

Identificador

oai:repositorio.fgv.br:10438/1734

Temas

Economia

Palavras-chave

EconomiaRelações econômicas internacionais