IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/9328.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Value of Information in International Trade: Gains to Outsourcing through Hong Kong

Author

Listed:
  • Robert C. Feenstra
  • Gordon H. Hanson
  • Songhua Lin

Abstract

In this paper, we estimate the benefits to countries that purchase goods from China of having access to intermediary services provided by Hong Kong. Traders in Hong Kong supply information on markets and producers in China, which provides welfare gains to foreign firms using these services. During the 1990s, Hong Kong intermediated about half of the goods that China exported to the rest of the world. Our results suggests that gains to intermediary services provided by Hong Kong equal 16% of the value of goods that China exports to other countries through Hong Kong, and range between 10% and 21% of this export value for various manufacturing goods and across different years.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert C. Feenstra & Gordon H. Hanson & Songhua Lin, 2002. "The Value of Information in International Trade: Gains to Outsourcing through Hong Kong," NBER Working Papers 9328, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9328
    Note: ITI PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w9328.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Feenstra, Robert C, 1994. "New Product Varieties and the Measurement of International Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(1), pages 157-177, March.
    2. Barry Naughton, 1996. "China's Emergence and Prospects as a Trading Nation," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 27(2), pages 273-344.
    3. Robert C. Feenstra, 1999. "Discrepancies in International Data: An Application to China-Hong Kong Entrepot Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(2), pages 338-343, May.
    4. Robert C. Feenstra & Gordon H. Hanson, 2004. "Intermediaries in Entrepôt Trade: Hong Kong Re‐Exports of Chinese Goods," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(1), pages 3-35, March.
    5. Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 2005. "Outsourcing in a Global Economy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(1), pages 135-159.
    6. Rauch, J E & Watson, Joel, 2001. "Entrepreneurship in International Trade," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt1qx2x540, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
    7. Redding, Stephen & Venables, Anthony J., 2004. "Economic geography and international inequality," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 53-82, January.
    8. James E. Rauch & Alessandra Casella, 2003. "Overcoming Informational Barriers to International Resource Allocation: Prices and Ties," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(484), pages 21-42, January.
    9. Casella, Alessandra & Rauch, James E., 2002. "Anonymous market and group ties in international trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 19-47, October.
    10. James E. Anderson & Eric van Wincoop, 2003. "Gravity with Gravitas: A Solution to the Border Puzzle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 170-192, March.
    11. repec:pri:wwseco:dp218 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Dubin, Jeffrey A & McFadden, Daniel L, 1984. "An Econometric Analysis of Residential Electric Appliance Holdings and Consumption," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(2), pages 345-362, March.
    13. James E. Rauch & Vitor Trindade, 2000. "Information and Globalization: Wage Co-Movements, Labor Demand Elasticity, and Conventional Trade Liberalization," NBER Working Papers 7671, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Gould, David M, 1994. "Immigrant Links to the Home Country: Empirical Implications for U.S. Bilateral Trade Flows," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 76(2), pages 302-316, May.
    15. Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 2002. "Integration versus Outsourcing in Industry Equilibrium," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(1), pages 85-120.
    16. Wan, Henry Y, Jr & Weisman, Jason, 1999. "Hong Kong: The Fragile Economy of Middlemen," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(3), pages 410-430, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carolina Lennon, 2008. "Trade in services and trade in goods: differences and complementarities," Working Papers halshs-00586223, HAL.
    2. Amador, João & Cabral, Sónia, 2014. "Global value chains: surveying drivers and measures," Working Paper Series 1739, European Central Bank.
    3. Alyson C. Ma & Ari Van Assche & Chang Hong, 2010. "Global Production Networks and the People’s Republic of China’s Processing Trade," Working Papers id:3041, eSocialSciences.
    4. Bruce A. Blonigen & Alyson C. Ma, 2019. "Please Pass the Catch-Up: The Relative Performance of Chinese and Foreign Firms in Chinese Exports," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Foreign Direct Investment, chapter 12, pages 401-445, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    5. Alessandro Nicita & Marcelo Olarreaga, 2007. "Information and Export Performance," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 95-111, June.
    6. João Amador & Sónia Cabral, 2014. "Global Value Chains: Surveying Drivers, Measures and Impacts," Working Papers w201403, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    7. Nordås, Hildegunn Kyvik, 2007. "International production sharing: A case for a coherent policy framework," WTO Discussion Papers 11, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.
    8. Guillaume Daudin, 2005. "Les transactions de la mondialisation," Revue de l'OFCE, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 92(1), pages 221-262.
    9. James E. Rauch & Joel Watson, 2004. "Network Intermediaries in International Trade," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(1), pages 69-93, March.
    10. Ma, Alyson C. & Van Assche, Ari & Hong, Chang, 2009. "Global production networks and China's processing trade," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 640-654, November.
    11. Nordås, Hildegunn Kyvik, 2003. "Fragmented production: Regionalization of trade?," WTO Staff Working Papers ERSD-2003-01, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.
    12. Kinra, Aseem, 2015. "Environmental complexity related information for the assessment of country logistics environments: Implications for spatial transaction costs and foreign location attractiveness," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 36-47.
    13. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/686 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Lars Calmfors & Giancarlo Corsetti & John Kay & Seppo Honkapohja & Willi Leibfritz & Gilles Saint-Paul & Hans-Werner Sinn & Xavier Vives, 2005. "Chapter 2: Outsourcing," EEAG Report on the European Economy, CESifo, vol. 0, pages 39-50, March.
    15. Aradhna Aggarwal, 2011. "PROMOTING AGGLOMERATION ECONOMIES AND INDUSTRIAL CLUSTERING THROUGH SEZs: EVIDENCE FROM INDIA," Journal of International Commerce, Economics and Policy (JICEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 2(02), pages 201-227.
    16. Patricia Sourdin & Richard Pomfret, 2012. "Trade Facilitation," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14596.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Robert C. Feenstra & Gordon H. Hanson, 2004. "Intermediaries in Entrepôt Trade: Hong Kong Re‐Exports of Chinese Goods," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(1), pages 3-35, March.
    2. Huang, Rocco R., 2007. "Distance and trade: Disentangling unfamiliarity effects and transport cost effects," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 161-181, January.
    3. Arribas, Iván & Pérez, Francisco & Tortosa-Ausina, Emili, 2009. "Measuring Globalization of International Trade: Theory and Evidence," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 127-145, January.
    4. Marianna Belloc, 2006. "Institutions and International Trade: A Reconsideration of Comparative Advantage," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(1), pages 3-26, February.
    5. Robert C. Feenstra & Gordon H. Hanson, 2005. "Ownership and Control in Outsourcing to China: Estimating the Property-Rights Theory of the Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(2), pages 729-761.
    6. Se Mi Park, 2021. "The interrelation between formal and informal institutions through international trade," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(5), pages 1358-1381, November.
    7. Hélène Ehrhart & Maëlan Le Goff & Emmanuel Rocher & Raju Jan Singh, 2012. "Does Migration Foster Exports? An African Perspective," Working Papers 2012-38, CEPII research center.
    8. Anthony Briant & Pierre-Philippe Combes & Miren Lafourcade, 2014. "Product Complexity, Quality of Institutions and the Protrade Effect of Immigrants," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(1), pages 63-85, January.
    9. Head, Keith & Mayer, Thierry, 2014. "Gravity Equations: Workhorse,Toolkit, and Cookbook," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 131-195, Elsevier.
    10. Cipollina, Maria & Salvatici, Luca, 2007. "EU and developing countries: an analysis of preferential margins on agricultural trade flows," Working Papers 7219, TRADEAG - Agricultural Trade Agreements.
    11. Carballo, Jerónimo & Rodriguez Chatruc, Marisol & Salas Santa, Catalina & Volpe Martincus, Christian, 2022. "Online business platforms and international trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    12. Deborah Swenson, 2005. "Outsourcing Price Decisions: Evidence from U.S. 9802 Imports," NBER Working Papers 11184, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. James E. Anderson & Eric van Wincoop, 2004. "Trade Costs," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(3), pages 691-751, September.
    14. Redding, Stephen & Venables, Anthony J., 2004. "Economic geography and international inequality," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 53-82, January.
    15. Arribas, Iván & Pérez, Francisco & Tortosa-Ausina, Emili, 2006. "Measuring International Economic Integration: Theory and Evidence of Globalization," MPRA Paper 16010, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2006.
    16. Carballo, Jeronimo & Ottaviano, Gianmarco I.P. & Volpe Martincus, Christian, 2018. "The buyer margins of firms' exports," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 33-49.
    17. Sugita, Yoichi & 杉田, 洋一, 2009. "Matching, Quality, Upgrading, and Trade between Heterogeneous Firms," CCES Discussion Paper Series 20, Center for Research on Contemporary Economic Systems, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University.
    18. Mayer, Thierry & Pierre-Phillippe Combes & Miren Lafourcade, 2003. "Can Business and Social Networks Explain the Border Effect Puzzle?," Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2003 150, Royal Economic Society.
    19. James Harrigan & Haiyan Deng, 2010. "China's Local Comparative Advantage," NBER Chapters, in: China's Growing Role in World Trade, pages 109-133, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Puga, Diego & Trefler, Daniel, 2010. "Wake up and smell the ginseng: International trade and the rise of incremental innovation in low-wage countries," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 64-76, January.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F1 - International Economics - - Trade
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9328. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.