From the Editor

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the fifth issue of The International Trade Journal (ITJ)’s thirty-fifth volume. The articles in this issue look at a variety of important issues. The articles look at how institutions and technology affect trade, the effect of minimum wages on total and female employment, trade in natural resource intensive goods, and how home market size and vertical linkages affect garment exports to the United States.

The first article in this issue, by Canh Phuc Nguyen, Nadia Doytch, Su Dinh Thanh, and Christophe Schinckus, looks at how information and communication technologies (ICT) and institutions affect trade openness in Africa.¹ They find that internet and mobile phone usage are both associated with greater trade openness. Better institutions, however, do not seem to consistently boost trade. African countries with greater political stability, less political violence, and more political accountability trade more with both African and non-African countries. In contrast, African countries with less corruption, more effective governments, stronger rule of law, and higher quality regulation only trade more with non-African countries.

The second article, by Dong Xuan Nguyen, looks at the effect of minimum wages on total and female employment in Vietnam. Nguyen finds that higher minimum wages are associated with higher total and female employment. The effect is greatest in medium-tech industries like automobiles and engineering and smallest in low-tech fields like textiles, garments, and footwear. The effect has been smaller since 2012, when minimum wages were equalized for foreign and domestic firms.

The third article in this issue, by Henry Thompson, presents a general equilibrium model of a small open economy with two traded goods: a labor-intensive import competing good and an export good that uses a depletable natural resource intensively. The natural resource is not directly exported. The author looks at the optimal depletion rate and how taxes and tariffs affect income and depletion.

The final article, by Anusua Datta, looks at garment exports to the United States.² The study finds that countries have greater U.S. market share when their country’s home market is larger, they produce more intermediate inputs in their home market, wages are lower, and transportation costs and tariffs are lower. As quotas were phased out, the effect of home market size and wages became more pronounced.

As usual, we would like to thank the people without whom the ITJ would not succeed. We would like to thank the authors who contribute their articles, the anonymous referees who give detailed and timely comments, the team at the International Trade Institute at Texas A&M International University who process submissions quickly and efficiently, our Editorial Board who guide the journal, and our publisher, Taylor and Francis, who ensures the ITJ keeps its high standards.

Notes

¹ Several earlier articles in the ITJ have looked at how ICT affects trade. Kaimann and Del Bono (2020) find that internet use increases trade in cultural goods. They do not, however, find any effect of digital dissimilarity. Bahmani-Oskooee and Ebadi (2016) argue that improvements in ICT have increased how quickly trade responds to changes in exchange rates. Other studies have looked at the effect of institutions and corruption on trade (Boudreaux 2015; Hamdi and Hakimi 2020).

² Another recent ITJ article also looks at the global apparel market. Lu (2015) assessed how the Trans-Pacific Partnership would affect China’s textiles and apparel exports.