CEPR-RIETI International Workshop

Internationalization of Firms and Trade: A comparison between Japan and Europe

  • Program

Announcement

This workshop presents some of the results from the RIETI research project "International Trade and Firms." In this project, research has been conducted on the internationalization of Japanese firms (exports, foreign direct investment, etc.) using Japanese firm-level data. A comparison between the internationalization of Japanese and European firms is also analyzed as RIETI continues to promote its research collaboration with the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), a leading European economic research institute.

In an opportunity made available through this ongoing collaborative effort, RIETI has invited two world-renowned international economists from CEPR to make presentations and share their research findings in this area. The details are as follows.

Information

  • Time and Date: 9:00-12:15, 14:15-16:50; March 27 (Fri.), 2009
  • Venue: Room 1121, METI Annex Building, 11th floor, Tokyo, Japan
  • Language: English (no interpretation available)
  • Charge: Free

*Quotation of information presented in this workshop is prohibited.

Agenda

Session 1

Chair: SATO Hitoshi's photo

Chair: SATO Hitoshi (Research Fellow, Institute of Developing Economies)

Bio

Degree:

Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison

Fields of interest:

International trade, applied microeconomics

Selected publications:

"A Factor-Proportions Theory of Endogenous Firm Heterogeneity," mimeo, 2008 (with Taiji Furusawa).
"The Internationalization of Japanese Firms: New Findings Based on Firm-level Data," RIETI Discussion Paper 08-E-036, 2008 (with Ryuhei Wakasugi, Yasuyuki Todo, Shunichiro Nishioka, Toshiyuki Matsuura, Banri Ito, and Ayumu Tanaka).
"Entrepreneurship, Financial Market Imperfections, and Trade," Hitotsubashi University, COE/RES Discussion Paper Series, No. 202, 2007.

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9:00 - 9:05 Welcome message

FUJITA Masahisa's photo

FUJITA Masahisa (President and Chief Research Officer, RIETI / Professor, Konan University)

9:05 - 9:15 Introduction to the "International Trade and Firms" project at RIETI

WAKASUGI Ryuhei's photo

WAKASUGI Ryuhei (Research Counselor, RIETI / Professor, Institute of Economic Research, Kyoto University)

9:15 - 10:15 "Of Markets, Products and Prices: The effects of the euro on European firms"

Thierry Mayer's photo

Thierry Mayer (Professor of Economics at the Paris School of Economics, University of Paris 1)

Bio

Degree:

Ph.D., University of Paris 1

Fields of interest:

International trade, foreign direct investment, economic geography

Selected publications:

HEAD, K., T. MAYER AND J. RIES, 2008, "How Remote is the Offshoring Threat?", forthcoming in the European Economic Review.
MARTIN, P., T. MAYER AND M. THOENIG, 2008, "Make Trade not War?", Review of Economic Studies 75(3): 865-900.
MARTIN, P., T. MAYER AND M. THOENIG, 2008, "Civil Wars and International Trade", Journal of the European Economic Association 6(2-3), 541-550.
HEAD, K. AND T. MAYER, 2008, "Detection of local interactions from the spatial pattern of names in France", Journal of Regional Science 48(1): 67-95.
DISDIER A-C. AND T. MAYER, 2007, "Je t'aime, moi non plus: Bilateral opinions and international trade", European Journal of Political Economy 23(4): 1140-1159.

Close

Discussant: TOMIURA Eiichi's photo

Discussant: TOMIURA Eiichi (Faculty Fellow, RIETI / Professor, Department of Economics, Yokohama National University)

10:15 - 10:30 Coffee break

Session 2

Chair: SATO Hitoshi's photo

Chair: SATO Hitoshi (Research Fellow, Institute of Developing Economies)

10:30 - 11:30 "Quality Competition Versus Price Competition Goods: An empirical classification"

Richard Baldwin's photo

Richard Baldwin (Professor of International Economics, Graduate Institute, Geneva / Editor-in-Chief of the Policy Portal VoxEU.org / Policy Director, CEPR)

Bio

Degree:

PhD., Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Fields of interest:

International trade, regional integration

Selected publications:

The Economics of European Integration, textbook with Charles Wyplosz, McGraw-Hill, 2003, 458 pages; third edition 2009.
What World Leaders Should Do to Halt the Spread of Protectionism, Edited by Richard Baldwin and Simon J. Evenett, A VoxEU.org Publication, 2008.What G20 Leaders Must Do to Stabilise Our Economy and Fix the Financial System, Edited by Barry Eichengreen and Richard Baldwin, A VoxEU.org Publication, 2008.
"Trade and growth with heterogeneous firms," with Frederic Robert-Nicoud, Journal of International Economics, Volume 74, Issue 1, January 2008, Pages 21-34.
"Entry and Asymmetric Lobbying: Why Governments Pick Losers," with Frederic Robert-Nicoud, Journal of the European Economics Association, vol. 5(5), 2007.

Close

Discussant: WAKASUGI Ryuhei's photo

Discussant: WAKASUGI Ryuhei (Research Counselor, RIETI / Professor, Institute of Economic Research, Kyoto University)

11:30 - 12:15 "Quantitative Evaluation of Determinants of Export and FDI: Firm-level evidence from Japan"

TODO Yasuyuki's photo

TODO Yasuyuki (Faculty Fellow, RIETI / Associate Professor, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo)

Discussant: OHASHI Hiroshi 's photo

Discussant: OHASHI Hiroshi (Faculty Fellow, RIETI / Associate Professor of Economics, The University of Tokyo)

Session 3

Chair: TODO Yasuyuki's photo

Chair: TODO Yasuyuki (Faculty Fellow, RIETI / Associate Professor, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo)

14:15 - 15:00 "Firms with Productivity Heterogeneity and Choice of Internationalization Modes: Statistical evidence from Japanese firm-level data"

WAKASUGI Ryuhei's photo

WAKASUGI Ryuhei (Research Counselor, RIETI / Professor, Institute of Economic Research, Kyoto University)

TANAKA Ayumu's photo

TANAKA Ayumu (Research Assistant, RIETI / Ph.D. student, Department of Economics, Kyoto University)

Discussant: ITO Yukiko's photo

Discussant: ITO Yukiko (Assistant Professor, Tokyo University of Economics)

Bio

Degree:

Ph.D., Brown University (Economics)

Fields of interest:

International trade

Selected publications:

"Essays on Multinational Enterprises" (2007), Ph.D. Dissertation, Brown University "Choice for FDI and Post-FDI Productivity" (2007), RIETI Discussion Paper, 07-E049
"Ownership Determination in Foreign Direct Investment" (2008), mimeo
"Scale and Scope of Operation by Multinational Enterprises" (2008), mimeo

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15:00 - 15:45 "Firm Heterogeneity and FDI with Matching Frictions"

SATO Hitoshi's photo

SATO Hitoshi (Research Fellow, Institute of Developing Economies)

Discussant: ICHIDA Toshihiro's photo

Discussant: ICHIDA Toshihiro (Associate Professor, Faculty of Commerce, Waseda University)

Bio

Degree:

Ph.D., Columbia University

Fields of interest:

International trade

Selected publications:

A Model with multi-dimensional skills: Occupational Choice, Human Capital Investments and Trade (in Japanese),Mitsubishi Economic Research Institute, 2008. "Occupational Choice and International Trade," Ph.D. Thesis, Columbia University (2004)

Close

15:45 - 16:00 Coffee break

Session 4

Chair: TODO Yasuyuki's photo

Chair: TODO Yasuyuki (Faculty Fellow, RIETI / Associate Professor, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo)

16:00 - 16:45 "Intra-Firm Trade and Contract Completeness: Evidence from Japanese affiliate firms"

MATSUURA Toshiyuki's photo

MATSUURA Toshiyuki (Fellow, RIETI)

ITO Banri's photo

ITO Banri (Visiting Scholar, RIETI / Research Fellow, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)

Discussant: OKUBO Toshihiro's photo

Discussant: OKUBO Toshihiro (Associate Professor, Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration, Kobe University / Honorary Research Fellow, Institute for Political and Economic Governance, University of Manchester, UK)

Bio

Degree:

Ph.D., University of Geneva

Fields of interest:

International trade and economic geography

Selected publications:

Firm Heterogeneity and Ricardian Comparative advantage within and across sectors. Economic Theory 38 (3), 2009, pp.533-559
Intra-industry Trade, Reconsidered: The Role of Technology Transfer and Foreign Direct Investment. The World Economy, vol. 30 issue 12, 2007, pp.1855-1876.
Trade Bloc Formation in Interwar Japan-A Gravity Model Analysis. Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, 21, pp.214-236.
Heterogeneous firms, agglomeration and economic geography: spatial selection and sorting. Journal of Economic Geography, 6, 2006, pp.323-346. (with Baldwin R.E.)
Border Effect in the Japanese Market - A Gravity Model Analysis. Journal of the Japanese and International Economies 18, 2004, pp.1-11.

Close

16:45- 16:50 Closing Remarks

OIKAWA Kozo's photo

OIKAWA Kozo (Chairman, RIETI)

In addition to the main workshop, a mini-workshop was held to discuss the financial crisis and its impact on trade.