Please post. Thanks.

 

Dear AIB colleagues,

 

We are pleased to present the first issue of the 25^th year anniversary of International Trade Journal.

 

Submissions and reviewers are welcome.

 

With warm regards,

 

Tagi

 

Texas A&M International University

The International Trade Journal

 

Volume 25, Number 1         January-March 2011

 

Articles:

·         Tagi Sagafi-nejad, “From the Editor” ……………………………………………….…….………………..….……………...………………… 1-4

·         Stephen W. Hartman, “NAFTA, the Controversy”……………………………………………………….………………………….………… 5-34

·         Miguel D. Ramirez, “Is Foreign Direct Investment Productive in the Latin America Case: A Panel Co-Integration Analysis, 1980-2002” …….…………35-73

·         Thomas M. Fullerton, Jr., W. Charles Sawyer, and Richard L. Sprinkle, “Intra-Industry Trade in Latin America and the Caribbean” ….…….…. 74-111

·         Aradhna Aggarwal, “Trade Effects of Anti-dumping in India: Who Benefits?” ………………………………………………………………..… 440-476

 [Taylor & Francis – The Routledge Group, publishers]

This issue can be electronically accessed at:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g931675483~tab=toc

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the Editor

 

Volume 25, Number 1         January-March 2011

 

 

 

Dear Reader,

With this issue, International Trade Journal celebrates a quarter-century of publication. Twenty five years is a long time in print media and particularly in the life of an academic journal. The world has witnessed revolutionary changes in publishing as in other arenas of intellectual discourse. New technologies, new vocabulary, and a continued explosion of intellectual and scholarly output have characterized these past years. We have come to use such words as “Google,” “text” and “tweet” as verbs! None of these - and the revolution they represent - existed at the advent of this journal. VAX, at the vanguard of electronic communication then, is now archaic.

The Journal was born in the mid-1970s in the midst of political, economic and technological turbulence! The US abandoned the dollar-based fixed exchange rate regime. A series of hearings and investigations by the Senate and the Securities and Exchange Commission uncovered a string of corrupt practices by US multinational corporations. The democratically elected Marxist president of Chile, Salvador Allende, was overthrown in a US-supported coup, and lost his life on September 11, 1973, and near that time the massacre at the Munich Olympics, the energy crisis, and the Watergate scandal. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries began to exert its newfound power, resulting in the quadrupling of oil prices and a world-wide recession. In short, it was a decade of turbulence.

The global economy (a term hardly used in the past) has undergone dramatic transformations in the last quarter-century. When this journal was first published, there was no World Trade Organization or NAFTA, and the flow of both trade and foreign direct investment was not nearly as strong as it came to be in ensuing years. The world economy was taking the first hesitant steps toward “globalization,” and many of the countries in the developing world were still called developing or underdeveloped, not “emerging countries” as they are now known.

Now, despite occasional setbacks, the globalization process has developed an irreversible tempo. Much of the world is now intertwined through the powerful bonds of trade and investment, cemented further by evolving rules under the stewardship of maturing global institutions. Interdependence is irreversible, unless unimagined catastrophic events occur. Sustainability, rather than globalization is now current in the intellectual marketplace.

The Journal begins its 25^th year amid turbulence once again. Although a critical difference between the 1970s and now is the smoothing effect of trade and investment flows, and the ever-increasing interdependence it has forced upon the global economy. Now we are one, more than ever before, and, save for a few renegade regimes, policymakers in every country are convinced that the drive toward a more integrated world, with global rules of engagement, collectively and multilaterally devised, are the best hope, and the most sustainable global strategy.

In this issue, four articles explore issues that manifest the changes in the global economy alluded to above. In the first article, Hartman discusses North American Free Trade Agreement. The author focuses on balance of trade and FDI flows between the NAFTA partners - US, Canada, and Mexico. His analysis confirms with facts and figures that the treaty has been beneficial to member states. He also points to the need for Mexico (the weakest link in the triangulated relationship) to have a strong and proactive government in order to gain better advantage from the relationship.

Ramirez broadens the discussion by asking the question “is foreign direct investment productive in Latin America?” Using a panel co-integration method and ECLAC and UNCTAD data, this author finds a closer tie between the US and Latin America than exists between the US and China, the great absorber of FDI of late. The dramatic rise in both trade and FDI is attributed, according to the author, to the adoption of market-friendly policies and market-oriented reforms. The author warns that simultaneous currency devaluation by a large number of countries could result in beggar-thy-neighbor policies. Instead, he recommends that governments adopt policies that encourage an increase in the dismally low savings rates to help finance investments in infrastructure and growth.

In the third article, Fullerton, Sawyer and Sprinkle investigate inter-industry trade with a focus on the Western Hemisphere. They develop regional estimates of intra-industry trade in Latin America, and find that, on the whole, this form of trade is lower in this region than the world average, albeit with variations by industry and country. The authors find that Argentina, Brazil and Mexico demonstrate higher incidents of Intra-industry trade than others in the region. They also parse the differences between industries, concluding that geophysical peculiarities of regions are worth further investigation. The progressive reduction in tariff and other trade barriers through bilateral and multilateral agreements have influenced the pattern and tempo of industrialization as well as trade.

Who benefits from what type of trade policy? What are the effects of India's anti-dumping measures? These questions are addressed by Aggarwal in the fourth and last article. Looking at the effect of anti-dumping duties on 177 products between 1994 and 2001, he employs a panel regression procedure to quantify their effects on the volume, value and price of imports. Aggarwal confirms the conventional wisdom that trade policy measures produce winners and losers, and concludes that India's domestic industry benefits from the application of anti-dumping measures. He further observes that developing countries that import to India suffer significant import losses, but developed countries are barely affected by them.

As the Journal begins its 25^th year of publication, it is time to thank those who have made this milestone possible. The faculty and administration at Texas A&M International University have been the ultimate mentors and facilitators. The diligent staff of the Journal and the support staff at Routledge Taylor & Francis, the publisher, deserve thanks for this sustained record of publication. Members of the Editorial Board have been unswerving and steady, and manuscript reviewers have been the true intellectual custodians of quality. All these members of the team should take pride that their journal has survived and flourished. So we thank all that have contributed to this success, and pledge to continue improving the quality of International Trade Journal.

Tagi Sagafi-nejad

Editor-in-Chief