New Development in Empirical International Trade.

• Position: Conferences - National Bureau of Economic Research - Center for Economic Policy Research

The 15th annual TRIO conference -- one in a series sponsored by the NBER, CEPR, and TCER to bring together economists from the United States, Europe, and Japan -- on "New Development in Empirical International Trade" took place in Tokyo on December 10 and 11, 2002. This year the Japanese Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry was also a cosponsor of the event. Kyoji Fukao, Hitotsubashi University; Takeo Hoshi, University of California, San Diego; Sadao Nagaoka and David Weinstein, NBER and Columbia University, organized this program:

Stephen Redding and Anthony Venables, London School of Economics, "Explaining Cross-Country Export Performance: International Linkages and Internal Geography"

Discussants: Peter Debaere, University of Texas, and Shumpei Takemori, Keio University

Donald Davis and David Weinstein, NBER and Columbia University, "Why Countries Trade: Insights from Firm-Level Data"

Discussants: Motoshige Itoh, University of Tokyo, and Stephen Redding

Kyoji Fukao; Hikari Ishido, Institute of Developing Economies; and Keiko Ito, ICSEAD, "Vertical Intra-Industry Trade and Foreign Direct Investment in East Asia" Discussants: James Harrigan, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Shujiro Urata, Waseda University

James Harrigan and Rohit Vanjani, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, "Is Japan's Trade (Still) Different?"

Discussants: Eiichi Tomiura, Kobe University, and Ryuhei Wakasugi, Yokohama National University

Keith Head and John Ries, University of British Columbia, "Foreign Direct Investment versus Exports: A Test of the Selection Hypothesis"

Discussants: Kyoji Fukao and Jota Ishikawa, Hitotsubashi University

Simon Evenett, World Trade Institute, "Do All Networks Facilitate International Commerce? U.S. Law Firms and the International Market for Corporate Control"

Discussants: Takeo Hoshi and Sadao Nagaoka

Takamune Fujii, Aichi University, and Fukunari Kimura, Keio University, "Globalizing Activities and the Rate of Survival: Panel Data Analysis on Japanese Firms"

Discussants: David Weinstein, and Laixun Zhao, Hokkaido University

Redding and Venables investigate the role of the international product market in determining export performance. They seek to explain the wide variations in countries' export performance over the last quarter century. For example, East Asian countries have seen real exports increase by more than 800 percent since the early 1970s, while those of Sub-Saharan Africa have increased by just 70 percent...