From the Editor

The International Trade Journal, Vol. 30, No. 5 (November–December 2016)

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the fifth and final issue of The International Trade Journal (ITJ)’s thirtieth volume. This issue is a special issue containing selected papers presented at the 20th Annual Western Hemispheric Trade Conference, which was held in Laredo, Texas, on April 13–15, 2016. The annual conference was sponsored by Texas A&M International University, the A. R. Sanchez, Jr. School of Business, and the Center for the Study of Western Hemispheric Trade, in partnership with the Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas’s Facultad de Comercio, Administración y Ciencias Sociales. We received many high-quality submissions this year, making it even more challenging than usual to select the articles for the special issue.

The Conference kicked off on the evening of Wednesday, April 13, with a keynote speech by Alfredo Corchado entitled “Still Midnight in Mexico? Mexico’s Challenges, Journalism and the Borderlands, and the New American Narrative.” Mr. Corchado is the Mexico Bureau Chief for the Dallas Morning News and the Southwest Borderlands Initiative Professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Mr. Corchado discussed his life growing up in Mexico and the United States, his time as a reporter in the two countries, and how drug-related violence has threatened Mexico’s national security and political stability. As part of the special issue, Ariadne Alejandra Gonzalez reviews Mr. Corchado’s 2013 book, Midnight in Mexico: A Reporter’s Journey through a Country’s Decent into Darkness.

In the Conference’s second keynote speech, which was held during lunch on Thursday, April 14, Dr. Michael Dooley gave a presentation on “Will China Trigger the Next International Financial Crisis?” Dr. Dooley is a partner at Drobny Global Advisors and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Dr. Dooley discussed how a hard landing in China could affect international capital markets and how other governments could limit the damage that this would cause the global economy.

In the Conference’s third and final keynote speech, which was held during lunch on Friday, April 15, Dr. Morten Jerven talked about “Africa: Why Economists Get it Wrong.” Dr. Jerven is an associate professor in international relations and global change at Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Dr. Jerven discussed the problems that economists have had in diagnosing the problems facing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. He argues that economists’ focus on Africa’s slow growth in the 1980s and 1990s has led to misguided analysis and inappropriate policy advice. The special issue also includes a review of Dr. Jerven’s recent book, Africa: Why Economists Get it Wrong.

In addition to the three keynote speeches, Dr. Victor Menaldo, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington, organized a panel discussion on “Development Traps and Escaping Development Traps: What Can We Learn from Freedom of Information Laws?” Aaron Erlich, an assistant professor at McGill University, and Daniel Yoo, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington, also participated. Dr. William Gruben, a former professor at Texas A&M International University and a former vice president and senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, chaired the session. All three presenters kindly agreed to submit summaries of their talks for inclusion in this issue of The International Trade Journal. In addition, the special issue also includes Dr. Gruben’s review of Dr. Menaldo’s recent book, The Institutions Curse: Natural Resources, Politics, and Development.

Along with the keynote speeches and panel presentation, the Conference included an additional 31 concurrent sessions in English and Spanish on all aspects of international business and trade. From the many excellent papers submitted to the Conference, the Program Committee selected a small number for consideration for the special issue. After being formally reviewed, some of these papers were selected for inclusion in this special issue.

The first article, by David Hudgins and Jim Lee, looks at how U.S. investment in the Mexican oil sector will respond to the recent legislative changes in Mexico and how this will affect oil production in Texas and Mexico. Based on their economic model, the authors argue that capital constraints are likely to reduce production in Mexico relative to what would have occurred if there were no constraints.

The second article, by Weiwei Wang, looks at how free trade agreements affect trade.¹ The author uses a gravity model with data from 21 large countries in Europe, Asia, America, and Oceania. The empirical results suggest that free trade areas increase trade between the countries involved. Moreover, deeper agreements that cover things such as investment, standards, government procurement, competition, and intellectual property rights have a greater effect than shallow agreements that focus mostly on tariffs.

In an earlier issue of the ITJ, Paul (2016) discusses what has driven China’s recent rise in the world economy. The third article in this special issue, by Stephen W. Hartman and Peter Whooley, asks how China’s rise will affect the United States. The authors conclude that the United States is not in direct competition with China. Moreover, they argue that, despite having different political and economic systems, international trade between the two countries will mean that the United States will benefit as China grows.

Over the past 20 years, Mexico has grown more slowly than most other countries in Latin America. As a result, poverty has remained high—barely improving since 1994. The fourth article in this special issue, by Chu V. Nguyen, tries to explain Mexico’s recent poor economic performance. Based on empirical tests, Nguyen concludes that the exchange rate has not contributed to Mexico’s poor economic performance. After ruling out exchange rates, the author suggests that slow growth must be due to something else, such as weak rule of law, which has undermined foreign direct investment and tourism, or high labor costs.

Given the results of the third article in this issue of the ITJ, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement has the potential to greatly increase trade among its members.² The final article in the issue, by Maria Guadalupe Arredondo Hidalgo, looks at how the TPP agreement will affect Mexico. Hidalgo assesses Mexico’s relationship with the other members of the agreement and identifies some of the challenges that Mexico will face.

As usual, we would like to acknowledge the people without whom the ITJ would not succeed. We would like to thank the authors for their contributions, the anonymous referees for the detailed and timely comments they provide, the team at the International Trade Institute at Texas A&M International University for processing submissions quickly and efficiently, our Editorial Board for their expert guidance, and our publisher, Taylor and Francis, for ensuring the high quality of the ITJ.

We would also like to thank everyone who contributed to the conference. In addition to the participants and the session chairs, we would like to thank the program committee and chairs who read and assessed the submissions to the conference: Chris Boudreaux, Jorge Brusa, Ken Hung, Balaji Janamanchi, Ned Kock, Adan Lopez Mendoza, Leonel Prieto, Tony Rodriguez, Steve Sears, and Haibo Wang. In addition, we would like to thank the hardworking staff who served as program coordinators: Jacqueline Benavides, Ellie Francis Breivogel, Baldomero G. Garcia, Jr., Vanessa Garcia, and Heleodoro Lozano. With support from Pedro Gallegos, Jr., Jose G. Manrique, Raul Moreno, and Erika Soliz, the program coordinators worked tirelessly throughout the conference. We would like to especially thank Amy Palacios, the Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Western Hemispheric Trade. In addition to serving as a member of the program committee, Ms. Palacios did all the hard work organizing sessions, arranging keynote speakers and coordinating their travel arrangements, helping participants to register, managing the Center and program staff, and ensuring that everything at the conference ran smoothly.

Finally, we would also like to take this opportunity to thank Ellie Breivogel, who has done an excellent job serving as the editorial assistant for The International Trade Journal for the past year. She recently announced that she will be leaving the ITJ to pursue new opportunities. She will be greatly missed.

We would like to invite all ITJ readers to attend next year’s conference in Laredo, TX, on April 5–7, 2017. As we did this year, we intend to invite the authors of the best papers at the conference to submit their papers to a special issue of The International Trade Journal. We also intend to encourage additional participants to submit short summary notes of their work for the special issue. We look forward to seeing you in Laredo in April 2017!

Notes

¹ Several other recent articles in the ITJ have looked at specific countries’ free trade agreements. See Ciuriak and others (2015) and Nguyen (2014).

² Lu (2015) also discusses the TPP, focusing on how it will affect China.