Trapped Factors and China's Impact on Global Growth

Nicholas Bloom, Paul Romer, Stephen Terry and John van Reenen

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: When China's accession to the WTO exposed European firms to import competition, they responded by increasing their investment in innovation. This response was stronger in industries and firms where factors of production were less mobile. Motivated by this evidence, we incorporate "trapped factors" at the micro level into a general equilibrium model of product-cycle trade and growth. In a calibrated version of the model that starts with a baseline growth rate of 2%, trade integration between the OECD and low-wage countries can increase the steady-state growth rate to 2.4% per year. Factors that are trapped at a firm by an unexpected change in trade policy do not change this long-run growth rate, but in the medium run, they could have a noticeable effect on aggregate growth. Simulations of the model show that in the first decade after liberalization, growth jumps to 2.7% per year and that trapped factors account for almost all of the 0.3% = 2.7% − 2.4% increase above the steady state growth rate.

Keywords: Innovation; trade; China; endogenous growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 D8 D92 E22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-fdg, nep-gro, nep-ino, nep-mac, nep-tid and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1261.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Trapped Factors and China’s Impact on Global Growth (2021)
Working Paper: Trapped factors and China’s impact on global growth (2020)
Working Paper: Trapped factors and China’s impact on global growth (2015)
Working Paper: Trapped Factors and China's Impact on Global Growth (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1261

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().