Negli ultimi vent'anni, l'apertura commerciale delle economie dell'Asia orientale – con abbondanza relativa di lavoro - ha eroso il vantaggio comparato dei paesi a reddito medio-alto nei manufatti ad alta intensità di lavoro. Questo fenomeno ha colpito particolarmente l’Italia, notoriamente...

This paper studies imports of quality products. The issue is more and more relevant because of the strong evidence of such differentiation in international trade. We first derive individual demand, then we aggregate without using the representative consumer hypothesis. We find that quality...

Intra-Industry Trade implies similar trade specialisation and is often associated with product differentiation. Differentiation depends on either quality or characteristics and two-way flows can be divided accordingly. If quality matters, we can measure relative quality of exports and imports....

In the debate on future prospects in East Asia after the recent economic crisis, this paper focuses on trade-based explanations of growth to study whether exports may lead the recovery of the five crisis-hit countries. For each of them, it analyses, at different levels of disaggregation, the...

This paper focus on the analysis of import demand functions in presence of quality differentiated products. This issue is more and more relevant because of the strong evidence of such kind of differentiation. Here we first derive individual elasticities, then we aggregate them to the national...

Central and Eastern European Countries have increased the weight of international trade on their GDP and the role of Foreign Direct Investment. Some are key final market for EU companies. Their integration, though, has been triggered by outsourcing and offshoring. Data show that their industrial...

The move towards export-oriented development strategies by China has increased concerns about the ability of Italian manifactures to effectively face price competition from emerging economies. This paper explores the hypothesis that the superior quality of Italian goods could support Italian...

This paper focuses on the estimation of sectoral import demand for Italy with European Union Countries, Japan, Canada and the United States. A strong evidence of two-way flows and product differentiation is an accepted regularity of the international trade. Given that, we have tried to include...

The increasing outward orientation of the Chinese economy — specialized in the same sectors included in the "Made in Italy" — has raised worries on the future of Italy's international specialization. This paper analyses OECD imports from Italy, France, Spain and China and shows that the...