中国人民大学经济学院          国际经济学Seminar      
    
      题目：Judicial Quality, Incomplete Contract, and Quality of Trade          报告人：崔晓敏 博士          时间：2017年5月27日（周六）14:00-16:00          地点：公教2221                                      内容提要：This paper studies how judicial quality affects average quality of trade for industries with different dependence on contract enforcement environment. By alleviating hold-up problem, better judicial quality lowers production costs relatively more for contract-intensive industries that intensively use relationship- specific inputs. We build a simple model to incorporate hold-up problem and the consequent relatively higher input costs for contract-intensive industries into a firm heterogeneous model with endogenous quality choice. Our theory suggests that better judicial quality does not necessarily raise average export quality for contract-intensive industries relatively more due to two offsetting effects: quality upgrading of existing exporting firms and increasing entry of less- productive firms. In contrast, better judicial quality always raises average import quality relatively more for contract-intensive industries since only foreign firms with high enough productivities are able to compete in that market due to pro-competitive effect. By using bilateral unit value and quality index constructed by Feenstra and Romalis (2014), as well as contract intensity from Nunn (2007), we empirically con.rm the predictions regarding judicial quality’s impact on average quality          of trade. Our results are robust to measurement issues, potential confounding factors, and possible reverse causality.                     报告人简介：崔晓敏，中国社会科学院世界经济与政治研究所助理研究员，北京大学国家发展研究院博士，主要研究方向：国际贸易和发展经济学的应用研究。论文曾发表在《经济学（季刊）》、《金融研究》、《国际经济评论》、《学术月刊》等杂志上，参与撰写英文专著Production Networks in Southeast Asia；作为主要参与人，在研国家社会科学基金重点项目1项、国家自然科学基金面上项目1项、东盟和东亚研究院-联合国贸易和发展组织“中国非关税壁垒”项目1项。                     中国人民大学经济学院          2017年5月26日