IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eth/wpswif/11-144.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

International Trade and Net Investment: Theory and Evidence

Author

Abstract

The theory of welfare accounting shows that comprehensive measures of net investment can be used to test whether an economy is following unsustainable paths of consumption. However, the notion of net investment used in most applied studies rules out technological progress and terms-of-trade gains from international trade. This paper considers an augmented expression of net investment derived from a dynamic growth model featuring international trade in different types of resource inputs, exogenous productivity growth in final sectors, and cost-reducing progress in resource extraction. Calculating augmented net investment for the world's top twenty oil producers, we show that the difference with standard non-augmented measures can be large and may even revert some established con- clusions regarding sustainability: prospects are more favorable than previously thought in oil-exporting countries endowed with large reserves like Angola, Azerbaijan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. In oil-importing economies, future consumption possibilities are limited by the lack of expected rental incomes from future resource exports.

Suggested Citation

  • Lucas Bretschger & Simone Valente, 2011. "International Trade and Net Investment: Theory and Evidence," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 11/144, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    • Handle: RePEc:eth:wpswif:11-144
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/mtec/cer-eth/cer-eth-dam/documents/working-papers/WP-11-144.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Avinash Dixit & Peter Hammond & Michael Hoel, 1980. "On Hartwick's Rule for Regular Maximin Paths of Capital Accumulation and Resource Depletion," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 47(3), pages 551-556.
    2. Svensson, Lars E O, 1986. " On the Intergenerational Allocation of Natural Resources: Comment," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 88(1), pages 153-155.
    3. Di Maria, Corrado & Valente, Simone, 2006. "The Direction of Technical Change in Capital-Resource Economies," MPRA Paper 1040, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Heal, Geoffrey M., 1993. "The optimal use of exhaustible resources," Handbook of Natural Resource and Energy Economics,in: A. V. Kneese† & J. L. Sweeney (ed.), Handbook of Natural Resource and Energy Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 18, pages 855-880 Elsevier.
    5. Bretschger, L. & Smulders, J.A., 2003. "Sustainability and Substitution of Exhaustible Natural Resources : How Resource Prices Affect Long-Term R&D Investments," Discussion Paper 2003-71, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    6. Kenneth J. Arrow & Partha Dasgupta & Karl-Göran Mäler, 2003. "The genuine savings criterion and the value of population," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 21(2), pages 217-225, March.
    7. Martin L. Weitzman, 1976. "On the Welfare Significance of National Product in a Dynamic Economy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 90(1), pages 156-162.
    8. Simone Valente, 2008. "Optimal Growth, Genuine Savings And Long-Run Dynamics," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 55(2), pages 210-226, May.
    9. Vellinga, Nico & Withagen, Cees, 1996. "On the Concept of Green National Income," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 48(4), pages 499-514, October.
    10. Edward Barbier, 1999. "Endogenous Growth and Natural Resource Scarcity," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 14(1), pages 51-74, July.
    11. Sefton, J. A. & Weale, M. R., 1996. "The net national product and exhaustible resources: The effects of foreign trade," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 21-47, July.
    12. Asheim, Geir B. & Weitzman, Martin L., 2001. "Does NNP growth indicate welfare improvement?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 233-239, November.
    13. Lucas Bretschger & Sjak Smulders, 2007. "Sustainable Resource Use and Economic Dynamics," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 36(1), pages 1-13, January.
    14. repec:reg:rpubli:132 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. repec:nsr:niesrd:73 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Maler, Karl-Goran, 1986. " On the Intergenerational Allocation of Natural Resources: Comment," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 88(1), pages 151-152.
    17. Geir Asheim, 2004. "Green national accounting with a changing population," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 23(3), pages 601-619, March.
    18. Christian Groth & Poul Schou, 2002. "Can non-renewable resources alleviate the knife-edge character of endogenous growth?," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 54(3), pages 386-411, July.
    19. Heal, Geoffrey & Kristrom, Bengt, 2005. "National income and the environment," Handbook of Environmental Economics,in: K. G. Mäler & J. R. Vincent (ed.), Handbook of Environmental Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 22, pages 1147-1217 Elsevier.
    20. Pezzey, J.C.V.John C. V., 2004. "One-sided sustainability tests with amenities, and changes in technology, trade and population," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 613-631, July.
    21. Pezzey, J., 1992. "Sustainable Development Concepts; An Economic Analysis," Papers 2, World Bank - The World Bank Environment Paper.
    22. Asheim, Geir B, 1994. " Net National Product as an Indicator of Sustainability," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 96(2), pages 257-265.
    23. Hartwick, John M., 1990. "Natural resources, national accounting and economic depreciation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 291-304, December.
    24. Solow, Robert M, 1986. " On the Intergenerational Allocation of Natural Resources," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 88(1), pages 141-149.
    25. Heal, Geoffrey & Kristrom, Bengt, 2008. "A note on national income in a dynamic economy," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 2-8, January.
    26. Vincent, Jeffrey R. & Panayotou, Theodore & Hartwick, John M., 1997. "Resource Depletion and Sustainability in Small Open Economies," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 274-286, July.
    27. Weitzman, Martin L, 1997. " Sustainability and Technical Progress," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 99(1), pages 1-13, March.
    28. Schulze, William D., 1974. "The optimal use of non-renewable resources: The theory of extraction," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 53-73, May.
    29. Pearce, David W. & Atkinson, Giles D., 1993. "Capital theory and the measurement of sustainable development: an indicator of "weak" sustainability," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 103-108, October.
    30. Hartwick, John M., 1990. "Natural Resources, National Accounting and Economic Depreciation," Queen's Economics Department Working Papers 273174, Queen's University - Department of Economics.
    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. Lucas Bretschger & Simone Valente, 2011. "International economics and natural resources: from theory to policy," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 115-120, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    International Trade; Natural Resources; Net Investment; Sustainability; Technological Progress;

    JEL classification:

    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • F11 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Neoclassical Models of Trade
    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:eth:wpswif:11-144. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/iwethch.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.