Vertical specialization generated by the international fragmentation of production within global networks is driven not only by comparative advantage, but also by the locational decisions of lead firms which determine the role and bargaining power of local producers in their value chain. This study examines the consequences of such specialization in textiles and clothing for 26 labour-abundant countries from 1990 to 2007. Fixed effects regressions based on panel data reveal that the industry does not always reap the benefits of the resulting international trade integration. Rather, the authors observe a negative relationship between vertical specialization and relative real wages in the textile and clothing industry.

Resumen La especialización vertical generada por la fragmentación de la producción en redes mundiales no solo está motivada por la ventaja comparativa, sino también por las estrategias de deslocalización de las empresas líderes, que determinan el papel y el poder negociador de los productores locales. Este estudio examina las consecuencias de tal especialización en los textiles y el vestido en 26 países con abundante mano de obra de 1990 a 2007. Las regresiones de efectos fijos con datos de panel revelan que el sector no siempre gana con la integración comercial internacional: se observa una correlación negativa entre la especialización vertical y los salarios reales relativos.

This paper contributes to the literature on monetary policy responses in emerging economies to international financial crises. Such issue is especially relevant for these countries insofar as they tend to be more unstable than developed countries. In addition, they suffer from larger cumulative output losses that have long-lasting negative effects on growth. If the earlier literature has suggested that emerging countries conduct pro-cyclical policies that exacerbate the impact of shocks, recent findings drawn from the experience of the global financial crisis show that they tend to more frequently adopt counter-cyclical monetary policies. However, even in the last crisis, all countries did not conduct expansionary monetary policies. Among the factors explaining such a behavior, the literature identifies the currency mismatch. This paper is related to this literature. It analyzes monetary policy responses to common financial shocks over the period 1995-2010 for a sample of ten emerging European countries. Emerging Europe has especially suffered from the global financial crisis. Three monetary instruments are analyzed: the nominal short-term interest rate, the real exchange rate, the foreign exchange reserves. Our empirical methodology used Structural Bayesian vector autoregressive (SBVAR) models over two crises periods (1995Q1-2001Q4 and 2002Q1-2010Q4). Our main findings are the following. First, common international financial shocks lead to different monetary policy responses. Second, countries with high currency mismatch ratios suffer from both fear of floating and fear of losing international reserves.