We apply a modified 'gravity model' incorporating measures of factor endowments to analyze Japanese and U.S. bilateral trade flows and direct foreign investment positions with a sample of around 100 countries for the period 1985-1990. Country features that our analysis takes into account are population, income, the land-labor ratio, the average level of education, and region. We find that features of a country associated with more trade with either Japan or the United States also tend to be associated with more DFI from Japan or the United States. U.S. economic relations with Japan and Western Europe provide an important exception. Despite U.S. concern about its trade deficit with Japan, we find Japan to be much more open to the United States, not only as a source of imports, but also as a destination for U.S. exports than most countries in Western Europe. Taking other factors into account, however, Western Europe is more open to U.S. direct foreign investment. We also find that a country's level of education tends to increase significantly U.S. interaction of all types with that country, even after correcting for per capita income. Education does not play a significant role in Japanese trade patterns. As factor endowments theory would predict, the United States tends to trade more with densely-populated countries, while Japan tends to import more from sparsely-populated countries. There is a substantial degree of 'bilateralism' in Japanese and U.S. economic relationships in that the residual correlation among exports, imports, and outward direct foreign investment is much larger than would be the case if these magnitudes were independent across countries.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
4758.
Length: Date of creation: Mar 1995 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4758
Note: ITI Contact details of provider: Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. Phone: 617-868-3900 Email: Web page: http://www.nber.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
Find related papers by JEL classification: F02 - International Economics - - General - - - International Economic Order; Noneconomic International Organizations;; Economic Integration and Globalization: General
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.) This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.