The comovement between exports and productivity observed in many countries suggests a direct link between these two variables. This paper tries to establish whether such a causal link exists for four developed market economies, using co-integration and Granger-causality techniques. These techniques offer a means to overcome serious problems encountered in previous attempts to examine this relationship, while recent trade theory suggests that the relationship between trade and productivity is fundamentally ambiguous. Both reasons call for more empirical evidence. The findings of the econometric analysis suggest that exports, productivity and the terms of trade move together in the long run in all countries except the United Kingdom.

A countertrade contract ties an export to an import. Usually, countertrade is criticized as a form of bilateralism and reciprocity and thus as an inefficient form of international exchange. In this paper we argue that there are circumstances in which the tying of two technologically unrelated trade flows may be efficiency-enhancing. We show that countertrade can be an efficient institution in international trade that solves moral-hazard problems and restores creditworthiness of highly indebted countries. We test the implications of our model using a sample of 230 countertrade contracts.

A countertrade contract ties an export to an import. Usually, countertrade is criticized as a form of bilateralism and reciprocity and, thus, as an inefficient form of international exchange. In this paper, the authors argue that there are circumstances in which the tying of two technologically unrelated trade flows may be efficiency-enhancing. They show that countertrade can be an efficient institution in international trade that solves moral-hazard problems and restores creditworthiness of highly indebted countries. The authors test the implications of their model using a sample of 230 countertrade contracts.

The causes of the wide variation in growth rates between countries have been debated by theorists of economic growth. Different studies have shown these disparities between growth rates largely to have been caused by different rates of increase in productivity per unit of factor input. The observed comovement between productivity and export growth suggest a direct link between these two variables. The paper explores the causal relationship between productivity and exports based on Austrian data using time series analysis. The causality analysis indicates no causal link from exports to productivity while the null of no causality from productivity to exports has to be rejected at conventional levels.