L24 - Contracting Out; Joint Ventures; Technology LicensingReturn

We analyze the effect of the large set of theoretically motivated determinants on international trade among European countries during the period 1992-2008. The determinats cover areas of culture, institutions, infrastructure, and geography, including trade directions. We analyze trade in three types of goods: raw materials, parts and components, and capital goods. For each type of goods we differentiate trade in flows, extensive margin, and intensive margin. Methodologically we first derive fixed effects related to unique pairs of countries in terms of exports andimports. Then we explain the fixed effects with the set of trade determinants. We show number of detailed results that could be summarized in a following way. Geographical, cultural, and institutional determinants exhibit intuitively correct but varying effects. Soft and hard infrastructures exhibit strong and positive effect. Trade directions between new and old EU members plays a key role in the European trade.

Based on the gravity model of the trade with imperfect specialization we suggest a testable econometric specification. The model considers bilateral gravity equation as a statistical relationship limited by the multilateral specialization patterns among countries. We test the model on disaggregated bilateral trade data of the European Union (EU) countries. Our results show that trade in final goods between East and West in Europe is driven by multilateral specialization incentives. The identified key drivers are supply side country differences in labour costs with respect to the rest of the world. This finding is compatible with the idea of incomplete specialization. We also show that trade between old and new EU members is realized more though increasing variety of products rather than by intensifying trade with established products.