文档介绍：Fragmentation and Trade:
US Inward Processing Trade in the EU
By
Holger Gfirg
Contents: I. Introduction. - II. Empirical Background. - III. Determinants of Frag-
mentation. - IV. Econometric Estimation. - V. Conclusions. - Appendix.
I. Introduction
he increasing "globalization" of the world economy over the last
decades has attracted much interest in the recent academic liter-
T ature (see, for example, Arndt 1997). Most scholars seem to agree
that the increasing levels of international trade in goods and services
and the increasing international mobility of capital are two signs of this
rapid globalization. Other economists, such as Jones and Kierzkowski
(1990, 2000) and Venables (1999), also point to the increasing possibil-
ities of international fragmentation, ., the splitting up of vertically in-
tegrated production processes into ponents, which enable
a more rapid globalization of the world economy. If production process-
es are fragmented, there is scope for international trade in intermediate
products as well as for the emergence of panies, with
plants in different countries producing ponents which are
then traded between plants within the multinationals.
The possibilities created by fragmentation have received consider-
able attention in the recent literature, with most of the literature to-date
being concerned with theoretical issues, analyzing these mainly from
the point of view of the international trade literature using Ricardian
and Heckscher-Ohlin type models (see Deardorff 1998, 2000; Jones and
Kierzkowski 2000). Complementing this work, this paper undertakes,
to the best of our knowledge for the first time, an empirical study of the
Remark: I am grateful to James McCarthy and Adrian Redmond of the Central Statis-
tics Office of Ireland for help with the Eurostat data. Thanks are due to Marius Brtilhart,
Henryk Kierzkowski, Gerard O'Reilly, Frances Ruane, an anonymous referee, and