Two Essays on International Economics: Topic One: An Empirical Test of Smile Curve in IT Industry; Topic Two: The Test of Rise and Fall Asymmetry on Oil Prices

• Main Authors: Hung Jun-Ren, 洪諄任
• Other Authors: Lin Jwu-Rong
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/81117338717087637919

碩士 === 東海大學 === 國際貿易學系 === 95 === Being confronted by universal trends of internationalization and integration of intraregional economy, the researches of the international economics essays are more and more important. Taiwan was built up from Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) with complete basic infrastructure, but lacked brand culture. Taiwan’s industry has to pursue the goal of rising value-added influence, and our government should correct the industry policy to future emerging industry with high value-added. Besides, Taiwan is a country that relies on imports of raw materials, and in the past, when the international price of oil went up, it caused a serious impact on domestic oil prices and the economy. According to these research backgrounds, we do the empirical study on two topics. One is concerning on the smile curve of Taiwan’s IT industry, another is about the relationship between international crude oil prices and domestic prices of gasoline and diesel fuel. On topic one, the research used the unbalanced panel data of Taiwan’s IT industry firms from 1998 to 2005. Using R&D intensity and advertising intensity as proxies of ODM and OBM, we construct fixed-effect and ordered logistic regression models to evaluate the impact of investment in China, R&D and advertising intensity on value-added influence and credit rating. The empirical results imply that Taiwanese firms in the IT industry are still in the phase of OEM which indicates relatively low intensity in R&D and advertising. The recommendations for these firms will be seeking further developments toward ODM by increasing their involvement in R&D and avoiding developments toward OBM with substantial increases in advertising involvement; with westward strategy, R&D can increase value-added effectively and improve credit rating. On topic two, the research used the weekly data from 2001 to 2006 concerning international crude oil prices and the domestic price of gasoline at the pump to examine the relationship between them. According to this research, if an asymmetrical relationship exists, an assumption can be made that the Taiwan gasoline market is being manipulated. The results show Taiwan is a small country for the import of gasoline and is highly sensitive to changes in international oil prices. Moreover, there are more rises than falls in relation to the corresponding ups and downs of the international oil market, and any price decrease in the local market occurs with difficulty. Additionally, the market structure we found one in which Chinese Petroleum Corporation (CPC) is the price leader in the wholesale market and Formosa Petrochemical Corporation (FPCC) is a follower. Further, the retail gasoline price is affected by international oil price and CPC wholesale gasoline price. Concluding to all of the evidence, we found that there are more rises than falls in international and domestic oil market, and CPC is the price leader and FPCC is the price follower in the wholesale market.